The Thin Place of Bethel in the Hebrew Bible
The Thin Place of Bethel in the Hebrew Bible.
“ The thin place is where the veil between this world and the next is so sheer that it is easy to step through.” (Barbara Brown Taylor, Home By Another Way).
This term from an ancient Celtic tradition has stood the test of time. The idea of a thin place between heaven and earth has captured our imaginations, and yet is not just a metaphor. Thin places are literal as well.
The traditional thin place as the Irish understood it has been described in many ways: where the veil between heaven and earth is so thin as to be porous, permeable, practically transparent; where the space between the diviner and the human has narrowed; where eternity and time intersect; where the boundary between heaven and earth has collapsed; where the wall between heaven and earth have become indistinguishable; where the doors between heaven and earth have cracked open enough to walk through, if only temporarily; the place where eternity and time seem to join together.
Those descriptions of thin places have recently been expanded to include… wherever God has chosen to reveal Himself and make Himself known with unusual intimacy; wherever the sacred interaction with God’s presence is more pronounced and accessible; wherever the Holy Spirit is released in a particularly powerful way; a physical space where one can more directly and intensely experience God’s presence. I like to think of a thin place as when the Spirit of God opens the skylight of the earth’s roof and helps us climb through it into the cellar of heaven.
Bethel. In Genesis 28 we find an exhausted Jacob on the run from his angry brother Esau who he had cheated. Jacob finally finds a place where he can lay his head and rest for a while. He finds a suitable stone that would serve as his pillow, and immediately falls asleep. And then something monumental happened.
“Then Jacob dreamed, and behold, a ladder was set up on the earth, and its top reached to heaven; and there the angels of God were ascending and descending on it. And behold, the Lord Yahweh stood above it, and said, ‘I am Yahweh, God of Abraham your father and the God of Isaac; the land on which you lie I will give to you and your descendants… Behold I am with you and will keep you wherever you go, and will bring you back to this land; for I will not leave you until I have done what I have spoken to you.’ Then Jacob awoke from his sleep and said, ‘Surely the Lord is in this place, and I did not know it.’ And he was afraid and said, “How awesome is this place! This is none other than the House of God, and this is the Gate of Heaven!’ (Genesis 28:12-17).
Genesis 28 – This Is God’s House || Bible in Song || Project of Love (youtube.com)
So Jacob named that thin place Bethel, the House of God. Then he took the stone pillow and anointed it, thus establishing a memorial that enabled Bethel to remain an important religious site until well after Solomon. That particular place, though, was known quite well as holy ground long before Jacob. Abraham for example, “invoked the Name of the Lord” there twice, pitching his tent at that place and building an altar there in honor of God. (Genesis 12:8 and 13:2-4). God’s covenant with Jacob was established at Bethel (Genesis 28:15), and God even asked Jacob to live there for a time (Gen. 35:1), and changing Jacob’s name to Israel (Gen. 35:9-15). Since Bethel, earlier known as Luz, was one of the highest places in Israel, with an elevation of almost 3,000’, it was very busy in Hebrew history as a common worship site. Bethel is mentioned 60 times in the Hebrew Bible, with only Jerusalem mentioned more. During the time of the Judges, the Ark of the Covenant was housed there, which made it an important worship center for faithful Jews. Most biblical archeologists now believe that Bethel was about 10 miles north of Jerusalem, in the hill country of Samaria.
But it didn’t take long for Bethel to take a drastic turn from being famous to infamous, from being a time-honored thin place to a spiritual death trap. Soon after Solomon, Jeroboam foolishly decided to establish Bethel as a pagan worship site, even going so far as to set up a golden bull there (1 Kings 12:28). Tragically, Bethel remained a pagan site for a long time, and was denounced by one prophet after another, such as Amos, Hosea and Jeremiah. Eventually, the heroic reformer King Josiah destroyed that pagan site literally and completely. Josiah left no doubt as to what he thought of Bethel’s turn to paganism… He executed all the pagan priests there, exhumed the bodies of the dead priests and burned their bones to ash on their altars, broke the stones of the pagan altars into pieces, and had those very pieces ground into dust! (2 Kings 23). Bethel became nothing but a memory, faded away in biblical history, and is not even mentioned in the New Testament.
If one wonders if a powerhouse thin place can change and go the opposite way, becoming instead a spiritual wasteland, Bethel will answer that question.