There are three locations in the chapter—Bethel, Ephrath, and Mamre. The chapter records four burials and three funerals. God was still cutting the ties that bound Jacob to earthly things. Some of those ties were very dear. The death of Rachel, for instance, must have seemed to Jacob to be “the most unkindest cut of all.” We think instinctively of David Livingstone. The great warrior knelt, bent and broken before the lonely grave at Shupunga where he had just laid to rest the mortal remains of his