On the first occasion that Jacob went to Bethel he was fleeing for his life. He had just pulled that dirty deed on Esau, taking advantage of Esau's weakness. He got the birthright and the blessing and Esau was rip-roaring angry and wanted to kill his brother and so Jacob was fleeing for his life when he came across Bethel. I do not know whether Jacob knew it at the time, whether Isaac had ever told him about the strange circumstances of their birth, but God had made His choice of the twins - Jacob, from the very beginning.
Bethel is significant not merely because God appeared to be dwelling there, but because of what happened to Jacob there. Jacob came to Bethel as a man with a past, a bad past, a rotten past. He was a sneaking, deceitful, conniving, grasping person, a great sinner.
Bethel represents Jacob's calling. It was the turning point of his life. So significant was the impact of his calling there that this conniving, grasping man said he was going to tithe! This was the man who wanted to grab everything and pull it into himself, but already a change was beginning to take place within him. Undoubtedly, some of the instruction of his father and grandfather suddenly came into his mind and God was much more real to him now than He had ever been before and he left there convinced that God was going to be with him.
What is Bethel then noted for? It is noted for transformation, meeting with God, and a person changes because of meeting with God. So Bethel then became associated in the Israelites minds as a place of renewal, a place of reorientation, of transformation that comes from God working through a person.
Look what happened to Jacob. From a grasping, conniving man, he suddenly decides he is going to give God a tithe. His attitude toward the tithing law changed. His attitude toward money was changed. He was still very vigorous in the accumulation of it, but a lot of the grasping and conniving was leaving from him. So there was a change in attitude toward law.
Seeing the ladder in a dream stretching into heaven, with angels ascending and descending, not men, angels. Verse 13 is very important: "And Behold the Eternal stood above it and said. . ." That is as far as I need to go.
"The Eternal stood above it." I believe that is mistranslated. The Revised Standard Version, the Revised English Bible, and the New International Version all translate that God was standing beside him. In other words, He was at the foot of the ladder, not above it. He was at the foot of the ladder standing beside him. Not only do those Bibles translate it that way or have a marginal reference translating it that way, or referring to it in that way, other Bibles do as well. Standing beside him.
In other words, God came down the ladder. He revealed Himself as being there. And that is why Jacob said, "God is in this place," and why he named it Bethel which means "this is God's house." Not that God is in heaven, but that Jacob's God was right there—that was His house.
Bethel became a shrine in later years because of that and because of what happened to Jacob there. It was not that Jacob merely had an encounter with Him, but something happened to Jacob. What happened to Jacob is that he arrived there a man with a price on his head and with a past, a man who was guilty of all kinds of deceitful tricks. He was guilty of stealing. And in one sense of the word, he was indeed guilty of a sin or a crime that was worthy of death. God in no way condoned that. God, though, had chosen Jacob even before, while both of them were still in the womb.
What happened here is that God confirmed that He had chosen Jacob and that He was going to follow through with Jacob nonetheless. Jacob arrived a man with a price on his head, with no future. He was transformed in a way so that he now had a future and he had a hope that he could live with. He was so encouraged by it that he promised then that he would tithe to him all of his days.
This of course is referring to that dream that Jacob had when he was fleeing for his life (Genesis 28:12-17). He was trying to get away from Esau, and he had this dream of the angels ascending and descending from heaven on a ladder. When he woke up he said, "God is in this place," and so he named the place "Bethel"—the "house of God." Jesus was referring to that.
There was a point—a purpose—behind that dream. For Jacob's sake, the purpose was to reassure him that God had not abandoned him—that God was with him—and despite the circumstances of his life (that is, he was fleeing for his life, and he was going away from his family, away from his roots, becoming a pilgrim), God was showing that there was going to be communication. There was going to be fellowship between him and God, represented by heaven and earth.
