It is thus, perhaps, a _sacred place_ that is intended as having been Jacob’s refuge on his way; and we at once recall the altar which Abraham raised between Bethel and Ai--towns which, as now identified, were only two miles apart. Abraham’s altar must have been close to the city of Luz, subsequently named from it Bethel, “the House of God;” and it was perhaps from the stones of this ancestral shrine that Jacob’s pillow was made. Bethel continued to be a religious centre after the establishment of the Tabernacle at Shiloh, in the time of Phineas, grandson of Aaron. We find the Ark established--at least during the campaign against the men of Gibeah--at Bethel; for there can be no reasonable doubt that Josephus is right in supposing the place called in our version “the House of God,” to be the town of Bethel (Judg. xx. 26, 27; Ant. v. 2, 10), as will be seen by comparison of the strategical lines occupied by the besieged Benjamites of Gibeah, one of which was the “highway which goeth up to Bethel” (verse 31). Even in the time of Samuel, sacrifice seems to have been offered at Bethel (1 Sam. x. 3), and the establishment of a Calf Temple by Jeroboam at Bethel was thus no innovation, but merely the restoration of an ancient high place. The extraordinary mixture of true and false worship which thus seems to have occurred--Bethel being the school of the prophets of Jehovah, while the Calf Temple still stood there--is a subject well worthy of consideration. The prophecy of Hosea, and that of Amos as well, connect Bethel and Bethaven in such a way as to make it appear that they were the same place. Such is the opinion of the Jewish commentators, and we may thus perhaps trace the origin of the present corruption of Beitîn for Bethel back to the early time of Jeroboam. Bethaven, however, means “house of naught,” and the title was originally given to the desert east of Bethel, because of its barren character, though in the prophecy there is a play on the word: “Gilgal (freedom) shall go into captivity, and Bethel shall come to naught” (Aven).