Genesis 28:19: A certain place gets a name, and the town beside it keeps its old one
Read it →"He called the name of that place Bethel, but the name of the city was Luz at the first." He had lain down at nightfall on open ground, with no idea where he was: the text says only "a certain place", three times in one verse, as though the point were that it was nowhere in particular. In the morning it has a name. House of God — because of what he saw on it, not because of anything that was there before he arrived. The second half of the verse is the map's business. There was already a town here, and it was called Luz, and the writer takes the trouble to say so. Bethel is the name of a stone and a vow before it is the name of a settlement, and for a while the two names sit side by side: Joshua 16:2 still distinguishes Bethel from Luz, and Judges 1:23 has to explain that the city's name was formerly Luz. The gazetteer files both at the same mound, and so does the map — Bethel carries the pin, Luz stands on it. The mound is Beitin, eleven miles north of Jerusalem on the ridge road, with 965 of its 1,066 votes; the rival is al-Bira a mile and a half south-west, at 91. Everything Jacob does here he undoes and redoes: the stone he sets up is a pillar, the oil he pours on it makes it an altar, and the vow he attaches to it — if God will be with me on this way, then the LORD shall be my God — is not paid until he is back on this exact hill twenty years later with a household of his own. He is running from a brother who means to kill him, and this is the ground on which he is told the land under him is his. It is the second time a promise has been made on this ridge: Abraham built an altar between Bethel and Ai on the way south, and came back to the same spot after Egypt to call on the name of the LORD.
Regions on this map
House of God, given to a patch of open ground by a man who had not known where he was when he lay down on it. The town next to it went on being Luz for some generations yet.
On the ridge road eleven miles north of Jerusalem, at about 2,900 feet. 965 of its 1,066 votes are for the mound at Beitin and 91 for al-Bira a mile and a half south-west. Abraham pitched between Bethel and Ai on his way down the ridge and built an altar there, and came back to it out of Egypt; Jacob names it here, vows here, and pays the vow here at 35:7.
Today: Beitin, West Bank
The town's own name, and the older one — the verse says so in as many words. Joshua 16:2 still lists the two apart and Judges 1:23 has to gloss the change, so the two names ran together for a long time. Every identification of Luz resolves to the same mound as Bethel, which is why it carries no pin of its own here.
no site of its own: all 500 of its votes resolve to the mound Bethel is pinned at, because they are the same town under an older name
Genesis 28:19 in full
- Genesis 28:19He called the name of that place , but the name of the city was at the first.