Amos 3:14

"For in the day that I shall visit the transgressions of Israel upon him, I will also visit the altars of Bethel; and the horns of the altar shall be cut off, and fall to the ground.

The singling out of the polluted shrine at Bethel is significant, as this was the seat of the religion of Israel. It will be recalled that when Jeroboam led the ten tribes in their secession from "the house of David," he was alarmed that the people returning to Jerusalem to worship God might eventually defect from his authority; he perpetuated a most contemptible and daring perversion of the worship of God:

"Whereupon the king took counsel, and made two calves of gold; and he said unto them (the people), `It is too much for you to go up to Jerusalem: Behold thy gods, O Israel which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt. And he set the one in Bethel, and the other he put in Dan'" (1 Kings 12:28,29).

"It has commonly been assumed that the golden calves were direct representations of Yahweh as bull-god,"[37] and some commentators claim that the true God was thus worshipped in Israel; but the very making of those golden calves was a flagrant violation of the law of God as known for centuries prior to Jeroboam. Aaron, it will be remembered, had done such a thing in the wilderness of wanderings while Moses was absent to receive the tables of the law, an event quite early in Israel's history; and that sinful episode had resulted in unqualified disaster for the Israelites. This action, therefore, on the part of Jeroboam was actually a repudiation of the worship of God, no matter how he had dressed it up and attempted to make it look like a "new form" of genuine worship. "The bull affiliations of Baal were too closely connected with the more degrading aspects of pagan cults to be safe, and there is every indication that the Northern Kingdom fell a prey to idolatrous pollution as a result."[38] The stinging words of this prophecy also indicate that the people were lying down upon pledged garments "beside every altar" (Amos 2:8), a plain reference to the fornication that was openly practiced in "the house of god!" Israel had forsaken the true God and had gone back to the gross idolatry of the old Canaanites, even adoring their filthy old "bull god." It is no wonder that God promised to "visit" those altars in Bethel, with the purpose of their total destruction. "The punishment of these altars suggests that false religion is the root of social decadence."[39] In fact, false religion was the root of all Israel's sorrow.

Together with Amos 3:15, below, we have in this denunciation of Bethel God's emphatic "cease and desist" in regard to all that Israel held dear. The word "house" as repeatedly used in the passage shows the completeness of this stop order which was hurled against them from heaven. Note the following from Mays:

"House of Jacob, house of God (Beth-El), winter house, summer house, ivory house, and great house. What Israel had built stands as the manifestation of the nation's rebellions. The devastation of these houses is the actualization of Yahweh's "No" to Israel's cult and culture."[40]

The claim of the Israelites, of course, was that they were indeed worshipping the true God, a farce which they encouraged by observing many of the rituals and commandments of the law of Moses. Burnt offerings, thank offerings, and meal offerings were presented there (Amos 5:22); but as Dummelow wrote:

"All this was vitiated by two faults: (1) The god whom the worshippers adored was not the Holy One, who alone is worthy, but a mere nature god, and (2) the worship was not of a kind to make men better; but it was closely associated with immorality and with luxurious eating and drinking."[41]