United States or Maldives ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
And the sons of the prophets that were at Beth-el came forth to Elisha, and said unto him, Knowest thou that the Lord will take away thy master from thy head to-day? And he said, Yea, I know it; hold ye your peace. And Elijah said unto him, Elisha, tarry here, I pray thee; for the Lord hath sent me to Jericho. And he said, As the Lord liveth, and as thy soul liveth, I will not leave thee.
We often think it enough to remove the grosser evils, and leave the less, but white ants will eat up a carcass faster than a lion. Putting away Baal is of little use if we keep the calves at Dan and Beth-el. Nothing but walking in the law of the Lord 'with all the heart' will secure our walking safely. 'Unite my heart to fear Thy name' needs to be our daily prayer.
The limestone rock is fissured into steplike terraces, which seem formed of blocks of stone piled one upon the other, and rising upwards like a gigantic staircase towards the sky. On the hill that towers above the ruins of Beth-el, we may still fancy that we see before us the "ladder" of Jacob. But the vision was more than a mere dream.
He took, accordingly, the stone that had served him for a pillow, and setting it up as an altar, poured oil upon it, and so made it a Beth-el, or "House of God," Henceforward it was a consecrated altar, a holy memorial of the God whose divinity had been mysteriously imparted to it. The Semitic world was full of such Beth-els, or consecrated stones.
If a man voweth a vow, and he does not fulfil it in good time, he will stumble through three grave sins, idolatry, unchastity, and bloodshed. Jacob had been guilty of not accomplishing promptly the vow he had taken upon himself at Beth-el, and therefore punishment overtook him his daughter was dishonored, his sons slew men, and they kept the idols found among the spoils of Shechem.
Therefore, when Deborah died in Beth-el, Jacob mourned for her, and he buried her below Beth-el under the palm-tree, the same under which the prophetess Deborah sat later, when the children of Israel came to her for judgment. But a short time elapsed after the death of the nurse Deborah, and Rebekah died, too. Her passing away was not made the occasion for public mourning.
But over and beyond this, Jacob had an especial reason for desiring to have his body interred in Palestine. God had said to him at Beth-el, "The land whereon thou liest, to thee will I give it, and to thy seed," and hence he made every endeavor to "lie" in the Holy Land, to make sure it would belong to him and his descendants.
It was a simple, confused notion of theirs: but it brought a blessing with it; for the king of Assyria sent them one of the Jewish priests who had been carried away from Samaria; and he came and lived at Beth-el, and taught them to fear the Lord.
And he removed from thence unto a mountain on the east of Beth-el, and pitched his tent, having Beth-el on the west, and Hai on the east: and there he builded an altar unto the Lord, and called upon the name of the Lord. And Abram journeyed, going on still toward the south. GENESIS xii. 1-9.
Herbert Leslie Terrell , John Woodruff Simpson , Simeon B. Chapin , Mortimer L. Schiff , Lamon V. Harkness , Alfred M. Hoyt , and Edwin Gould . Then, at Seventy-sixth Street, is the Temple Beth-El, which was completed in 1891, and which represents the first German-Jewish congregation in this country, dating back to 1826. The dwelling houses that come next belong to Mrs.
Word Of The Day