It was probably in this lovely valley that Jacob had his wondrous vision. He had come from Beersheba, a distance of seventy miles. This long journey, however, is not in harmony with the common belief that the dream occurred on the first night after leaving his father’s house. Urged on by the dread of an injured brother, he slept the first night beside the graves of his ancestors at Hebron, thirty-six miles from the patriarchal groves of Beersheba; rising early and passing through the vineyards of Eshcol, he rested at noon the next day at Bethlehem, seventeen miles from Hebron, and near the spot where, twenty years later, he buried his beautiful Rachel; six miles beyond he passed Jerusalem on the right, the future capital of his mighty posterity; and late in the evening of the second day, the stranger and weary traveler reached Bethel, eleven miles farther northward. The gates of the city were closed, and, like the pilgrim Arab of to-day, he selected a stone for his pillow, and, wrapping his capote or cloak about him, lay down to peaceful slumber. In a land where customs never change, such beds and pillows are not uncommon now, and thus are explained not only the story of the fugitive, but also our Lord’s command to the sick of the palsy, “Arise, take up thy bed, and walk.”[459] The bed was simply a coarse thick cloak of camel’s hair.
In this retired vale, and beside this same fountain, Jacob dreamed of the Invisible, and awoke exclaiming, “How dreadful is this place! This is none other but the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.” Here the shining ones came down, and here Jehovah calmed the troubled spirit of the sleeper by the promise of protection. Cheered by the gracious promises of the Almighty, Jacob awoke, and, as a memorial monument, set up the stone that had served as a pillow, and anointed it with oil to seal the covenant he had made. Whether he was the first to conceive of building a church to God, and whether that is the sense of the text, Bethel became a sanctuary for his descendants.[460] When he returned after an absence of twenty years, here the faithful Deborah died, and he buried her under an oak, to which he gave the name of Allon Bachuth――“the oak of weeping.”[461] Destined to live in history in all coming time, Bethel became the scene of many great and thrilling events. It was the place where Samuel held his circuit court, in connection with Mizpah and Gilgal.[462] Subsequently to the death of Solomon, and the rending in twain of his vast empire, Bethel became the imperial rival of Jerusalem, and was polluted with an idol temple, in which Jeroboam placed a golden calf. It was against this abomination the prophet cried: “O altar, altar, thus saith the Lord, Behold, a child shall be born unto the house of David, Josiah by name; and upon thee shall he offer the priests of the high places that burn incense upon thee, and men’s bones shall be burnt upon thee.”[463] Offended at the boldness of the seer, the king sought to smite him, but in the attempt his arm was smitten with paralysis.[464] On this slope lived the old prophet who over-persuaded the Lord’s servant to enter his house, contrary to the divine injunction, and by the wayside is the tomb in which both were interred.[465] Chosen for its central location, years later Bethel became a school for the prophets, and hither Elijah came on the day of his translation.[466] And three centuries and a half after the utterance of the prediction, Josiah destroyed the temple and altar of Jeroboam, but spared the tomb of the Judæan seer.[465]