Abraham and Jacob, and God, at Beth El

I have always thought that Jacob’s expression of wonder and understanding at Bethel, “Surely God is in this place, but I did not know it,” is one of the most meaningful verses in the entire Bible. I have applied it to aspects of life in which I have found glimpses of the Divine. Taken out of context, the verse will continue to be important to me in this way. I now have come to study this verse in its context, and I see it as a window to the importance of Bethel in biblical times, and to the centuries-long struggle between monotheism and polytheism.

Jacob’s name becomes ‘Israel’ at Peniel after an all-night struggle with a mysterious Divine being (Gen. 32:25-33). In a parallel story, Jacob’s name is changed to ‘Israel’ at Bethel (Gen. 35:1-15), the site of his earlier dream of a stairway of angels ascending and descending to Heaven (Gen. 28:10-22). It will be Bethel that will have a fascinating history for the Israelites that begins with Abraham and will continue for many centuries. I will make what I think is a new suggestion that the scene of Jacob’s stairway is the site of Abraham’s altar near Bethel (Gen. 12-13), and that it is not a coincidence that there were stones there to serve as a pillow and a pillar. Abram erected an altar near Bethel and pitched his tent there; after his sojourn in Egypt, he came back to the same place, from which he parted with Lot. God blesses Abraham in Gen. 13, and then Jacob in Gen. 28, with the same blessing in the same place. Jacob may not have realized that he had come to the same place as his grandfather, but later generations would know its significance. In creating a rival kingdom and cult to that of the Davidic dynasty, Jeroboam I would build his sanctuary-city and capital at Bethel, invoking its traditional associations to try to outmatch the recently acquired Jerusalem. Yet as soon as he did, his actions were explicitly and drastically denounced by a prophet of the LORD (I Kings 13). The prophets Amos, Hosea, and Jeremiah would all criticize those who worshipped at Bethel in syncretistic ways that were untrue to its great significance as a sacred place of the LORD. Jacob’s monotheistic words that the LORD is in this place but that he did not know it would be forgotten by those who would use its antiquity for purposes antithetical to God’s sanctification of this special site.

Genesis 28:10-22: Jacob at Bethel

Jacob left Beersheba, and set out for Haran. He came upon a certain place (makom) and stopped there for the night because the sun had set. Taking one of the stones there, he put it under his head and lay down to sleep. He had a dream in which he saw a stairway resting on the earth, with its top reaching to heaven, and the angels of God were ascending and descending on it. There above it stood the Lord… When Jacob awoke from his sleep, he thought, “Surely the Lord is in this place, and I was not aware of it.” He was afraid and said, “How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God; this is the gate of heaven.” Early the next morning Jacob took the stone he had placed under his head and set it up as a pillar and poured oil on top of it. He called that place Bethel, though the city used to be called Luz.¹

This poignant passage has evoked interested commentary through the centuries. For example, the noun s-l-m is a hapax legomenon. Extensive scholarly debate has determined that the word s-l-m does not designate a ladder or a stairway, since it has no steps.² Instead, it may have been a ramp, the access road of a city, envisioned here as a descent road built from the top downwards, leading from the city of God, Heaven, to the earth.³ I would add that Jacob consecrates a stone at the bottom of the stone ramp that leads to Heaven.

Critical Interpretation on the Story of Jacob’s Dream at Bethel

A convenient summary of critical scholarship on Bethel in the Bible is by Gomes.⁴ Gomes is focused on source critical divisions that find contradictions between different sources about the naming of Bethel (J: 28:19; E: 28:18; P: 35:15). Instead of seeing these as contradictions, we should see all three sources as proclaiming the spiritual significance of Bethel in the patriarchal period.⁵

The source critical argument that there seem to be two naming-theophanies of Israel and two naming-events of Bethel does seem credible, but all of them could be very early. If the riveting story of Jacob’s naming by the mysterious being at Peniel had been known for centuries, would a later priestly scribe have moved the event to Bethel? There could have been two traditions about where Jacob became Israel, both ancient.

Like most critical scholars going back to Gunkel and Alt,⁶ Gomes sees Genesis 28 as an etiology, which really means an artificial story designed to stand as a foundation for Jeroboam’s sanctuary as the center of his new kingdom of Israel. In this view, Genesis 28 is meant to trump the opposition to this new sanctuary as can be seen in I Kings 13, where the man of God denounces the creation of that new altar.

Is Genesis 28:10-22 a later etiological construct designed to serve as the foundation of Jeroboam I’s sanctuary? The logic is that Jeroboam I, in creating a new kingdom made up of the ten tribes in the north that he had led away from the arrogant Rehoboam, son of Solomon, did not want his subjects to see Jerusalem as their religious center and make pilgrimages there (I Kings 12:26-27). So in creating this new sanctuary, his supporters, perhaps including the Elohist who wrote the E source in the Documentary Hypothesis, created this story about how Jacob finds the nexus of heaven and earth at Bethel.

Some have rejected the idea that Genesis 28:10-22 is a foundation story of the Israelite temple of Bethel.⁷ Benno Jacob states, “The story shows no trace of the desecration of Bethel by Jeroboam who established the worship of golden calves there (I Kings 12:29), nor of the vehement attacks of the prophets against this (e.g., Amos 5:5; Hos. 4:15).”⁸

I would like to turn this idea of etiology on its head and claim that Jeroboam made his new sanctuary at Bethel because of its long tradition of sacredness, and to emphasize the biblical authenticity and antiquity, to say, ‘We are the true Israel, and we have the true sanctuary of God.’ The story of Genesis 28 was not written to serve Jeroboam’s purposes; the story and the traditions existed for centuries before Jeroboam, and he set his sanctuary there, in an attempt to say, ‘We are the conservatives, you in Judah are the radical innovators.’ The story of Jacob at Bethel seems very early, innocent of later developments, and Jeroboam drew from their deep well. As a major proof of this, see how Jacob uses pillars for worship, which I believe shows the antiquity of these passages:

Early in the morning, Jacob took the stone that he had put under his head and set it up as a pillar and poured oil on the top of it… Jacob then made a vow, saying: And this stone, which I have set up as a pillar, shall be God’s abode (Gen. 28:22).

… and Jacob set up a pillar at the site where He had spoken to him, a pillar of stone, and he offered a libation on it and poured oil upon it (Gen. 35:14-15).

For all the scholarship that claims that these narratives were written centuries later, it is hard to imagine that a later literary creation would show the patriarch erecting pillars, a ritual that was explicitly prohibited in those times. There is no opposition to the veneration of such pillars or what seem to be references to a tree-cult in Genesis 12:6-7 and 13:21, which contradict Deuteronomy 16:21: You shall not set up a sacred post — any kind of pole beside the altar of the LORD your God that you may make — or erect a stone pillar; for such the LORD your God detests.

And yet we see Jacob erecting a pillar, and we will see below that Abraham will seem to associate himself with sites with tree-cults. These narratives seem very early, indeed.

Midrashic Interpretation of Jacob’s Experience at Bethel

In traditional Jewish interpretation, Bethel’s authentic antiquity, uniqueness and sacredness often are obscured. “And he took of the stones of the place” become stones from the altar at Moriah that Jacob brings with him: “Jacob took twelve stones from the altar on which his father Isaac had lain bound as a sacrifice.”⁹ Beth-El here often becomes Jerusalem: “R. Judah b. R. Simon said: This ladder stood on the Temple site, while [the top of] its slope was over Beth-el” (BR 69:7).¹⁰ Jerusalem, which becomes the central sacred place, subsumes this earlier sacred place of Beth-el. In another ancient interpretation, the ladder represents Sinai (BR 68:12). In still another, Jacob has visions of the Temple in Jerusalem: he sees it built, destroyed, and rebuilt in the Messianic era (BR 9:7).¹¹ The vision may come at Bethel, but it is about Jerusalem. In other midrashic texts, the city of Luz becomes a legendary City of Immortality, where the Angel of Death cannot come (TB, Sota 46b). Perhaps not, but the story of Jacob at Beth El is indeed immortal. Usually, as Boyarin has taught us, the midrash is more attuned to intertextuality.¹² I believe there is interesting evidence to connect the texts about Abraham and Jacob at Bethel.

Abraham at Bethel

When they arrived in the land of Canaan, Abram passed through the land as far as the site of Shechem, at the terebinth of Moreh. The Canaanites were then in the land. The LORD appeared to Abram and said, “I will assign this land to your offspring.” And he built an altar there to the LORD who had appeared to him. From there he moved on to the hill country east of Bethel and pitched his tent, with Bethel on the west and Ai on the east; and he built there an altar to the LORD and invoked the Lord by name (Gen. 12:5-8).

The formulation of makom with a place name as in Makom Shechem is unique in the Hebrew Bible. The term makom as a sacred site is found in Deuteronomy starting in Deuteronomy 12ff. and elsewhere in the Bible.¹³ Sarna says that “it is very likely that the term here has the special meaning of ‘sacred site,’” but that “nothing in the narrative suggests that Shechem had any prior sanctity for Abram.”¹⁴ And yet it cannot be a coincidence that Abram goes to Shechem and Bethel, two sites sacred to polytheists. The Canaanite is mentioned as “then in the land” in Genesis 12:6 after the reference to Elon Moreh, the Oracular Oak, which was clearly connected to a pagan cult of the Canaanites. While it is the LORD that Abram worships, not the other gods, we know Abram has indeed come to, or near, sites venerated by polytheists. We have archaeology that the site of Bethel was an important and ancient center of polytheism. Excavators have found evidence of a great open-air shrine dating as early as 3500 BCE. A temple was built there in the 19th century BCE. A stone pillar was found in situ.¹⁵ There seems to have been a god named Bethel (Jer. 48:13); the god is referred to in a treaty between Tyre and Assyria in the 7th century BCE and as late as the archives from Elephantine in the 5th century BCE.¹⁶

Abram did not build his altar in a town to try to convince or persuade the Luzites who lived there. Benno Jacob writes, “Here, at the place of Canaanite worship, Abraham gains the certainty that this must become the land of the true God… the altar is Abraham’s response to the divine revelation and a protest against Canaanite worship.”¹⁷ There is an emphasis on Abram calling on the name of the LORD at Bethel; declaring the place for the LORD, but perhaps more, to modify what Benno Jacob says, not so much as a protest against other gods but as a declaration of his monotheistic faith. Abram did not protest other cults and showed respect for the faiths of others, quietly pioneering monotheism without creating conflict (see his ecumenical service with Melchizedek in Genesis 14:18-20). Still, it is near Bethel that Abram begins to call the LORD by name, to say that this sacred place is for the One God, not for any gods that have been worshipped in the area before this.

Clearly, the site near Bethel is significant for Abram and for the biblical narrative. After he leaves Egypt, he deliberately goes there again: …and he proceeded by stages from the Negeb as far as Bethel, to the place where his tent had been formerly, between Bethel and Ai, the site of the altar that he had built there at first; and there Abram invoked the LORD by name (13:4). His return to “the site of the altar” in v. 4 is a phrase used for sanctuaries to which people go in the hope of encountering God (Deut. 12:5, 11, 21, etc.).

Abraham and Jacob at Bethel

And the LORD was standing beside him (Jacob) and He said, “I am the LORD, the God of your father Abraham and the God of Isaac” (Gen. 28:13).

We note that Abraham is called Jacob’s father. This formulation is unique in the Bible, though there are close parallels: God calls Himself “the God of Abraham your father” to Isaac in Genesis 26:24 and introduces Himself in the famous pronouncement to Moses at the Burning Bush in Exodus 3:15-16 as “the LORD, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.” If I am right to draw parallels between the revelation at Bethel to Abraham in Genesis 13 and Jacob in Gen. 28, the God referring to Himself as the God Who spoke to Abraham in the same place is worthy of mention. But it is the content of the two revelations that is even more striking: in 28:13 the ground on which Jacob is lying will be assigned to him and his offspring, echoing 13:15’s gift of all the land Abram sees; 28:14 promises that Jacob’s descendants shall be as the dust of the earth, echoing 13:16’s promise to Abram in the same terms; and 28:14’s instruction to spread out west and east, north and south echoes 13:14’s instruction to Abram to look out in the same four directions.¹⁸

To review: Luz was a polytheistic site (archaeology). Abram builds an altar between what will later be known as Bethel and what will later be known as Ai (after Joshua conquers it and turns it into a “Ruin,” Josh. 8:28-29, which is the meaning of the name), one of the first monotheistic sites. Jacob also is not at the village of Luz, no more than Abraham was at Bethel; he is between (what he will call) Bethel and (what will later be known as) Ai. Jacob comes to the same place, but since time has passed and his grandfather’s altar is no longer there, he does not understand where he is. Jacob makes a promise to establish the place as a cultic center. Despite this promise, he goes to Shechem when he returns to Canaan after twenty years. It cannot be a coincidence that Shechem was the site of the very first monotheistic altar, his grandfather’s first altar, when he returns after twenty years to Canaan. Still, God must command him to go to Bethel, and this only after the violent events at Shechem (Gen. 34). He does go, but it seems that God wants to sanctify the cult and the Heaven-Earth importance of Bethel more than Jacob does. When Joshua conquers the land, after an initial defeat because of disobedience to God, he places his army between Ai and Bethel (Josh. 8:9) and from that position they defeat the enemy. This reluctance to sanctify Bethel and this disobedience to God will be a pattern through the centuries. God will seek the relationship with Israel more than the Israelites of the Northern Kingdom will seek a covenantal, monotheistic relationship with Him. Jeroboam will re-establish Bethel, but will erect a Golden Calf there, re-enacting the worst sin of idolatry in the Torah (I Kings 12). He will add sin upon sin, and God will destroy the new altar there on the day of its consecration (I Kings 13). The kings of Israel to follow will all perpetuate these sins. The prophets Amos, Hosea and then later Jeremiah will all rail against them. After the destruction of the northern kingdom, Josiah, as predicted in 1 Kings 13, will destroy the altar, shrine, and sacred post at Bethel (II Kings 23:15-18).

And yet, even though Hosea condemns what happens in Beth El in Hosea 4:11 and 5:8, calling Beth El, “Beth-Aven,” he states: At Bethel [Jacob] would meet him/There to commune with him (Hos. 12:5). So NJPS; but the Hebrew says, “with us.” What if we take Hosea at his Hebrew word, and he here recalls the early story of Jacob’s experience at Bethel, an event that still is powerful and beautiful. Even after everything that has happened there, God still wants to commune with us at Bethel.

We do not know if Abraham and Jacob ever met, but if they did, he and Isaac could have passed down the covenant and monotheism to Jacob without speaking about the altar at what would become known as Bethel, which he had built 85 years earlier.¹⁹ He did not leave a permanent shrine, and Isaac never went there, though Isaac did build an altar at Beersheba and did invoke the name of the LORD there (Gen. 26:25). Abraham may not have been concerned about the maintenance of the altar he had built. It was just a place for him to worship. Perhaps, as a gentle father and grandfather, he wanted to let his son and grandson find the House of God for themselves. And so it was forgotten; it became a jumble of stones in a clearing. Jacob may use one of his grandfather’s stones as a pillow, and he might be given one of the greatest dreams in all of world literature, but he does not make the connection. God, however, did not forget that place, and it became the navel of the earth. God wants Jacob to return to Beth El. Bethel is an earthly center of the One God’s relationship with Israel. Jacob may not know it at first, but God has known it, and it is no more of a coincidence that Jacob has come there than that Elijah will later come to Mt. Sinai in I Kings 18.

So He gives Abraham and Jacob the same prophecy in the same location. Perhaps the ancient stone from Abraham’s altar is the link that prompts God to grant Jacob the vision. Sometimes each generation finds its connection to God without being aware how the generations before had come to the same place.

With the passage of time, the monotheistic essence and spirit of Beth El would keep getting lost, just as Jacob did not know that his grandfather had built one of the earliest altars of monotheism there.

Still, Bethel’s magnetic spiritual power continued to have powerful imaginative legitimacy. Why is the ramp at Beth El? Because Abraham first called on God there. But also, because it is in the center of the land, as God says to Abram in Genesis 13: Look in all four directions. You are not only at the center of Israel but the center of the world where the angels ascend and descend between Earth and Heaven.