In Genesis 28 is the story of Jacob fleeing for his life whenever he stole the birthright away from Esau. He hightailed it out of there at the urging of his mother who conspired with him.
While he was there he had this dream of the ladder. The angels of God were ascending and descending on it. It really made an impact on Jacob's mind. Then, God spoke to him and He said in verse 15:
Jacob was the father of the Israelite people. Jacob had a life changing experience with God at Bethel. From that time on, Bethel became a place of special regard, an honor, an awe and respect to the people who were descended from Jacob because it was that way to Jacob. Jacob passed the knowledge of that on to his children, who in turn passed the knowledge of that on to their children.
So Bethel was almost like a holy place, because God Himself had actually been there. Of all the places in the nation of Israel, that was one place that they could say that God had actually been there. It was a place of special regard to them.
You can begin to see why Jeroboam, astute politician that he was, reached back into the past and said we're going to set up an altar (which there had never been) at Bethel. Our father Jacob was there. Sounds good. Sounds logical. Why didn't somebody think of that before? New knowledge; new doctrine; God is revealing things to us.
Does God change His mind about things like that? He said to go to Jerusalem not to Bethel. But the people bought it!
Jeroboam did the same thing with Dan. In Judges 17 - we won't go through the whole story because it's a rather long affair about a man named Micah who hires himself a Levite to be his own personal priest. In the course of this Levite's service to Micah, the Danites come through the area and they steal this Levite away. Micah wasn't going to fight against six hundred armed men, so they took his teacher (his father, as he called him, the Levite) and they took his idols and statues that were there, and they took this Levite to Dan - the city that they named after their father.
