Bethel

(house of God) (Gen. 28:19). During Jacob’s journey, as he fled from the wrath of his brother Esau, to Mesopotamia, he stopped at a place near the city of Luz, where he had a vision of the mysterious ladder ascending to heaven. As a result, he called this place, and the nearby city, Bethel, that is, “house of God,” Beth-El. At Bethel, during Jacob’s stay there, Deborah, Rebekah’s nurse, died, and was buried under the oak below Bethel (Gen. 35:8). It was located to the east of the road going from Shechem to Jerusalem, and almost equidistant from both cities.

Bethel was the capital of one of the Canaanite kings, and the Ephraimites, to whom this city fell at the division of the Promised Land, were unable to take possession of it unless they made use of the help of one of its inhabitants (Judg. 1:22, 26). The Ark of the Covenant remained a long time at Bethel, and here too, after the division of the kingdom into Judah and Israel, Jeroboam set up one of the golden calves (1 Kings 12:28, 33), and probably as a result of this the prophet Hosea calls Bethel “Beth-aven,” that is, “house of idol-worship.” Afterward Bethel fell under the power of Judah, and king Josiah destroyed the pagan gods and altars, burning upon them human bones taken out of the graves; for this reason the expression “to go to Bethel” generally pointed to idol-worship (Amos 4:4; 5:5).

At Bethel the prophet Samuel once judged (1 Sam. 7:16). After the captivity the city was still populated by Jews who had returned from the Babylonian captivity, and was fortified by Bacchides the Syrian, in the days of the Maccabees (1 Macc. 9:50). In the New Testament Bethel is not mentioned, but it still existed. Now it is a ruin, known under the name of the settlement Beitin. “Bethel now,” writes Norov, “is nothing but a shepherds’ encampment upon heaps of ruins; there is not a single hut here; only in the semicircular niche of the altar of an ancient remnant of a Christian church do half-clad and hungry Arab shepherds find shelter and refuge.”