BETH'EL (Heb., house of God, from beth, house + cJ. God). A town of Palestine, the mod ern Betin, situated in the mountains at a height of 25S0 feet above the sea-level. 10 miles north of Jerusalem. It is associated with the early traditions and legends of the Hebrews. Abraham pitches his tent near Bethel, builds an altar, and worships Jehovah there (Gen. xii. 8; xiii. 3) : but it is Jacob who is more particularly associated with the place, and to whom the giv ing of its name is assigned. Many modern bibli cal writers consider that here in Genesis two di vergent stories are found. According to the one (Gen. xxviii.), God appears to Jacob at Bethel on his flight to Harlin; in the other, it is on the re turn of .lacoh from Padan-Arnm that he encoun ters God (Gen. xxxv.). The former contains the story of Jacob's vision, in which he sees angels ascending and descending a ladder'—in reality a structure like a Babylonian ziggurat, or temple-tower, with a sloping ascent winding around to the top, and .Jehovah stands at Jacob's side and repeats the promise made to Abraham. The second story lays more emphasis upon the change of .Jacob's name to Israel than upon the name Beth-el given to the place because God 'spoke' with Jacob there, while according to the former the giving of the name follows Jacob's exclamation, is none other than the house of God"—i.e. Beth (house) El (God). These traditions bear witness to the antiquity of the sanctuary at Bethel, and it is interesting to compare these accounts with the later view represented by the 'Yahweh purists,' who dis carded those ancient sanctuaries as idolatrous.
So Jeroboam is rebuked for erecting a sanctuary at Beth-el (I. Kings xii. 29), Hosea going so far as to call the place Beth-Aven, 'house of in iquity' (Hoc. iv. 15). Its earlier name is said to have been Luz (Gen. x.xviii. 19; xxxv. 6; xlviii. 3; Joshua xviii. 13, etc.) ; once (Joshua xvi. 2) a distinction is made between Bethel and Luz, according to the received Hebrew text, but some for 'Bethel' here read `Bathavin.' A king of Bethel is mentioned (Joshua xii. 9, 16), which may be taken as an indication of the importance of the place. As a frontier town it is sometimes reckoned as belonging to the tribe of Benjamin (.Joshua xviii. 22), some times to Ephraim (.Judges i. 22). During the period of the Judges Bethel was, in fact, the central sanctuary of the northern tribes, where the ark was stationed (Judges xx. 18), and when the division of the tribes came, Bethel rose to even greater significance in the Kingdom of Israel, having an elaborate organization of priests and prophets (Amos vii.), to which the masses were drawn by the feasts and rites, arranged with great splendor. The worship of Jehovah at Bethel proved a serious rival for a long period to that at Jerusalem, and hindered the religious concentration at the latter place until the down fall of the northern kingdom.