Bethel (Beit El)
בֵּית־אֵל
Where was biblical Bethel? At Beitin, about 5 km northeast of Ramallah, about 17 km north of Jerusalem. I mark it very likely.
Jacob ran from Esau and lay down on the road outside this town with a stone for a pillow. He dreamed of a ladder reaching heaven, woke up afraid, and called the place Beit El, the house of G-d.
By Aaron Shaffier, licensed Israel tour guide and mapmaker · About the mapmaker
- Site today
- Beitin, about 5 km northeast of Ramallah
- How sure
- Very likely Strong evidence, with no serious rival.
- Other names
- Beth-el, Luz, Beitin, Baytin
- Location
- 31.9265° N, 35.2369° E (Google Maps)
How we know where it was
The Bible fixes Beit El between neighbors. Abraham pitched his tent with Beit El on the west and Ai on the east. The Book of Judges places Shilo north of Beit El, beside the road to Shechem. The Arab village of Beitin fits both. It also keeps the name, with the final -el turned to -in, a common shift in Arabic. Eusebius puts Beit El twelve Roman miles north of Jerusalem, east of the road to Shechem, and that is where Beitin sits.
The town's older name was Luz. Luz means nut, probably almond, and the Arabic word for almond is still lauz. The Canaanite town may have been named for its almond groves, and almonds still grow on these hills.
I filmed the Walking Tanach episode Jacob's Ladder on a hilltop facing Beitin. Stay till evening and you see why Jacob was caught out on the road. The light lingers, then the sun drops past the Mediterranean, with Tel Aviv on the horizon, within minutes. From up there you see from the mountains of Jordan to the sea, west and east, north and south, every direction G-d promised Jacob his children would spread.
Excavators found a Bronze and Iron Age town at Beitin, but the Iron Age remains are thin for a royal sanctuary. Jeroboam set up a golden calf in Beit El. He chose it, like Dan, to claim an older worship than Solomon's new Temple in Jerusalem. Sometimes the person who does the most horrible act is the one who claims authenticity.
I think that temple may have stood on the hilltop where I filmed. There is a casemate wall, a double wall with rooms built into it, around a monumental structure of Tabernacle-like proportions. There is a raised area that could be the bamah, the high place. Guard towers ring the hill.
Then there are the tombs. Walk around the base of that hilltop and you find about thirty burial caves cut into the slope. Why would anyone be buried here? For the same reason Jews want to be buried on the Mount of Olives, facing the Temple Mount. Jeroboam's true believers wanted to lie beneath their temple.
Now read the Book of Kings. When King Josiah came to Beit El, he smashed Jeroboam's altar and burned the high place. Then he looked around and saw the tombs on the mountain. He had the bones taken out and burned on the altar, just as a man of G-d had foretold three hundred years earlier, naming Josiah before he was born. The tombs are still there, at the foot of the hill, where the text puts them.
Locals call a domed building on that hilltop the place of Abdallah, the servant of G-d, an echo of "Jacob my servant." Muslims and later Crusaders both marked the spot. Jacob called this the Gate of Heaven, and yet we were there all by ourselves.
One proposal moves Beit El to el-Bireh, beside Ramallah, to fit Eusebius's distance. It has found little support.
Watch: Jacob's Ladder
Walking Tanach, Episode 5. Filmed on the hilltop facing Beitin.
Visiting today
Little is excavated in Beitin, and visits depend on access in the area. I filmed the Walking Tanach episode Jacob's Ladder, on the hilltop facing the village.
Read it in the Bible
Verse numbers follow the Hebrew Bible. In a handful of chapters English Bibles count one verse off.
See Beit El on the interactive map →
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Get the print + free ebookNearby places
- Ai 3 km southeast
- Mizpah 5 km southwest
- Ophrah 7 km northeast
- Baal Hazor 7 km northeast
- Michmash 7 km southeast
- Ramah (Ramathaim Zophim) 9 km south