Do not seek Bethel! ¹  Do not visit Gilgal! Do not journey down ²  to Beer Sheba! For the people of Gilgal ³  will certainly be carried into exile; ⁴  and Bethel will become a place where disaster abounds.” ⁵ 

Then he moved from there to the hill country east of Bethel ¹  and pitched his tent, with Bethel on the west and Ai on the east. There he built an altar to the Lord and worshiped the Lord. ² 

Now there was an old prophet living in Bethel. ¹  When his sons came home, they told their father ²  everything the prophet ³  had done in Bethel that day and all the words he had spoken to the king. ⁴ 

He built an altar there and named the place El Bethel ¹  because there God had revealed himself ²  to him when he was fleeing from his brother.

Jeroboam inaugurated a festival on the fifteenth day of the eighth month, ¹  like the festival celebrated in Judah. ²  On the altar in Bethel he offered sacrifices to the calves he had made. ³  In Bethel he also appointed priests for the high places he had made.

“Certainly when ¹  I punish Israel for their ²  covenant transgressions, ³  I will destroy ⁴  Bethel’s ⁵  altars. The horns ⁶  of the altar will be cut off and fall to the ground.

I am the God of Bethel, ¹  where you anointed ²  the sacred stone and made a vow to me. ³  Now leave this land immediately ⁴  and return to your native land.’”

Then God said to Jacob, “Go up at once ¹  to Bethel ²  and live there. Make an altar there to God, who appeared to you when you fled from your brother Esau.” ³ 

Let us go up at once ¹  to Bethel. Then I will make ²  an altar there to God, who responded to me in my time of distress ³  and has been with me wherever I went.” ⁴ 

(Deborah, ¹  Rebekah’s nurse, died and was buried under the oak below Bethel; thus it was named ²  Oak of Weeping.) ³ 

They traveled on from Bethel, and when Ephrath was still some distance away, ¹  Rachel went into labor ²  – and her labor was hard.

Joshua sent them away and they went to their hiding place ¹  west of Ai, between Bethel ²  and Ai. ³  Joshua spent that night with the army. ⁴ 

He took five thousand men and set an ambush west of the city between Bethel ¹  and Ai.

No men were left in Ai or Bethel; ¹  they all went out after Israel. ²  They left the city wide open and chased Israel.

The land allotted to Joseph’s descendants extended from the Jordan at Jericho ¹  to the waters of Jericho to the east, through the desert and on up from Jericho into the hill country of Bethel. ² 

She would sit ¹  under the Date Palm Tree of Deborah between Ramah and Bethel ²  in the Ephraimite hill country. The Israelites would come up to her to have their disputes settled. ³ 

Year after year he used to travel the circuit of Bethel, ¹  Gilgal, and Mizpah; he used to judge Israel in all of these places.

for the prophecy he announced with the Lord’s authority ¹  against the altar in Bethel ²  and against all the temples on the high places in the cities of the north ³  will certainly be fulfilled.”

So one of the priests whom they had deported from Samaria went back and settled in Bethel. ¹  He taught them how to worship ²  the Lord.

Abijah chased Jeroboam; he seized from him these cities: Bethel ¹  and its surrounding towns, Jeshanah and its surrounding towns, and Ephron and its surrounding towns.