Bethel meaning in Hebrew

Hebrew language

Hebrew is a Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Culturally, is it considered by Jews and other religious groups as the language of the Jewish people, though other Jewish languages had originated among diaspora Jews, and the Hebrew language is also used by non-Jewish groups, such...

 and Phoenician and Aramaic

Aramaic language

Aramaic is a group of languages belonging to the Afroasiatic language phylum. The name of the language is based on the name of Aram, an ancient region in central Syria. Within this family, Aramaic belongs to the Semitic family, and more specifically, is a part of the Northwest Semitic subfamily,...

 'House of El

El (god)

is a Northwest Semitic word meaning "deity", cognate to Akkadian and then to Hebrew : Eli and Arabic )....

' or 'House of God' is seemingly the name of a god or an aspect of a god in some ancient middle-eastern texts dating to the Assyria

Assyria

Assyria was a Semitic Akkadian kingdom, extant as a nation state from the mid–23rd century BC to 608 BC centred on the Upper Tigris river, in northern Mesopotamia , that came to rule regional empires a number of times through history. It was named for its original capital, the ancient city of Assur...

n, Persian and Hellenistic periods.

In the treaty between King Esarhaddon

Esarhaddon

Esarhaddon , was a king of Assyria who reigned 681 – 669 BC. He was the youngest son of Sennacherib and the Aramean queen Naqi'a , Sennacherib's second wife....

 of Assyria and Ba‘al I

Baal I

Baal I was the king of Tyre . His name is the same as that of the Phoenician deity, Baal. He was tributary to the Assyrians, who had conquered the rest of Phoenicia, and sent his son Yehawmelek to Ashurbanipal with heavy tribute. He also may have assisted the Assyrians in their war against Elam.-...

 king of Tyre in 677 BC, curses are called down on the Tyrian king if he breaks the treaty, including:

May Bethel and Anat-Bethel deliver you to a man-eating lion.

The name Bethel begins to appear in theophorous name from the 7th century BC

7th century BC

The 7th century BC started the first day of 700 BC and ended the last day of 601 BC.The Assyrian Empire continued to dominate the Near East during this century, exercising formidable power over neighbors like Babylon and Egypt. In the last two decades of the century, however, the empire began to...

 onward. Some suspect it may be this god rather than the city of Bethel

Bethel

Bethel was a border city described in the Hebrew Bible as being located between Benjamin and Ephraim...

 that is mentioned :

And Moab

Moab

Moab is the historical name for a mountainous strip of land in Jordan. The land lies alongside much of the eastern shore of the Dead Sea. The existence of the Kingdom of Moab is attested to by numerous archeological findings, most notably the Mesha Stele, which describes the Moabite victory over...

 shall be ashamed of Chemosh, as the house of Israel

Israel

The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...

 was ashamed of Bethel their confidence.

Or to put it another way, the stone at Bethel which was named House-of-God was also a god in itself, a manifestation of the god Bethel.

Bethel appears in Genesis 31.13, "I am the God of Beth-el, where thou anointedst a pillar, where thou vowedst a vow unto me: now arise, get thee out from this land, and return unto the land of thy nativity."

may give the personal name Bethelsharezer 'May Bethel protect the king'. This is a verse in which translators greatly differ as to whether Bethel means the town of Bethel which sent Sharezer, or that Sharezar and his fellows were sent to the House of God (that is the temple in Jerusalem), or that "they" sent Bethesharezer and his fellows.

Bethel is mentioned, but unfortunately with no details, in Elephantine

Elephantine

Elephantine is an island in the River Nile, located just downstream of the First Cataract at the southern border of Ancient Egypt. This region is referred to as Upper Egypt because the land is higher than that near the Mediterranean coast. The island may have received its name because it was a...

 and Hermopolis

Hermopolis

Hermopolis Magna or simply Hermopolis or Hermopolis Megale or Hermupolis is the site of ancient Khmun, and is located near the modern Egyptian town of El Ashmunein in Al Minya governorate.-Etymology:Khmun, the Ancient Egyptian name of the city, means "eight-town", after the Ogdoad, a group of...

 papyri. And in those papyri there are also mentions of gods named Eshembethel 'Name of Bethel' and Ḥerembethel 'Sanctuaury of Bethel' (cf. Arabic ḥaram 'sanctuary').

Sanchuniathon

Sanchuniathon

Sanchuniathon is the purported Phoenician author of three lost works originally in the Phoenician language, surviving only in partial paraphrase and summary of a Greek translation by Philo of Byblos, according to the Christian bishop Eusebius of Caesarea...

 mentions the god Baitylos as a brother of the gods El and Dagon

Dagon

Dagon was originally an Assyro-Babylonian fertility god who evolved into a major northwest Semitic god, reportedly of grain and fish and/or fishing...

. He later says that the god Sky devised the baitylia

Baetylus

Baetylus is a Semitic word denoting a sacred stone, which was supposedly endowed with life. According to ancient sources, these objects of worship were meteorites, which were dedicated to the gods or revered as symbols of the gods themselves...

, having contrived to put life into stones. The reference would seem to be to Bethels in the plural, that is to many stones like the stone in the Israelite city of Bethel which served a housing for God in Israelite belief.

Compare the Egyptian goddess Hathor

Hathor

Hathor , is an Ancient Egyptian goddess who personified the principles of love, beauty, music, motherhood and joy. She was one of the most important and popular deities throughout the history of Ancient Egypt...

whose name means 'House of Horus'.