Bethel (of Palestine)

Their holdings and settlements included Bethel and its villages, Naaran to the east, Gezer and its villages to the west, and Shechem and its villages as far as Ayyah and its villages.

One calf he set up in Bethel, and the other in Dan.

³² And Jeroboam ordained a feast on the fifteenth day of the eighth month, like the feast that was in Judah, and he offered sacrifices on the altar; he made this offering in Bethel to sacrifice to the calves he had set up, and he installed priests in Bethel for the high places he had set up.

³³ On the fifteenth day of the eighth month, a month of his own choosing, Jeroboam offered sacrifices on the altar he had set up in Bethel. So he ordained a feast for the Israelites, offered sacrifices on the altar, and burned incense.

Suddenly, as Jeroboam was standing beside the altar to burn incense, there came a man of God from Judah to Bethel by the word of the LORD.

Now when King Jeroboam, who was at the altar in Bethel, heard the word that the man of God had cried out against it, he stretched out his hand and said, “Seize him!” But the hand he stretched out toward him withered, so that he could not pull it back.

¹⁰ So the man of God went another way and did not return by the way he had come to Bethel.

¹¹ Now a certain old prophet was living in Bethel, and his sons came and told him all the deeds that the man of God had done that day in Bethel. They also told their father the words that the man had spoken to the king.

³¹ After he had buried him, the prophet said to his sons, “When I die, you must bury me in the tomb where the man of God is buried. Lay my bones beside his bones,

³² for the message that he cried out by the word of the LORD against the altar in Bethel and against all the shrines on the high places in the cities of Samaria will surely come to pass.”

Every year he would go on a circuit from Bethel to Gilgal to Mizpah, judging Israel in all these places.

Then you will go on from there until you come to the Oak of Tabor. Three men going up to God at Bethel will meet you there, one carrying three young goats, another carrying three loaves of bread, and another carrying a skin of wine.

He chose for himself three thousand men of Israel: Two thousand were with Saul at Michmash and in the hill country of Bethel, and a thousand were with Jonathan in Gibeah of Benjamin. And the rest of the troops he sent away, each to his own home.