What does Genesis 35:2 mean?
More than 20 years have passed since Jacob made vows to make the Lord his God and to recognize Bethel as God's house (Genesis 28:16–22). Now God has commanded Jacob to resettle his large company several miles south of their current location. They are to move to the unique location where the Lord had appeared to Jacob in a dream as he was fleeing the land of Canaan and his brother Esau (Genesis 27:42).Jacob quickly sets about obeying God's commands. Before they go, however, Jacob issues commands of his own to his large company of family and servants. First, they are to gather up all their foreign gods. This would include house idols of the type that Jacob's wife Rachel had stolen from her father Laban (Genesis 31:19). Many people and households of the day would have had a collection of idols to worship as gods in the hopes of receiving blessing and protection. Jacob, however, had vowed to the Lord in Bethel to make the Lord his God, with the implication that he would have no other gods. Later, God would explicitly command Jacob's descendants, the people of Israel, to have absolutely no other gods or idols of any kind (Exodus 20:3).
Next, Jacob commands his company to purify themselves and change their clothes. In other words, they were to wash and put on clean garments in preparation for worshiping the Lord at Bethel.