Amos 5:5

"But seek not Bethel, nor enter into Gilgal, and pass not to Beersheba: for Gilgal shall go into captivity, and Bethel shall come to naught."

The people no doubt supposed that their frequenting the shrines at such places as Bethel, Beersheba and Gilgal would enable them to know God; but in this they were totally wrong. "God can only be sought and found through his revelaton."[16] It was impossible to find God at such places.

"Those were centers of idolatry, false teaching, false worship; they would find there only ruin, destruction and captivity, for that is what God had planned for those places."[17]

The high places mentioned in this verse had never been a proper place for seeking God; and what we have here is the total repudiation of an entire system of false religion. Many commentators seem to be unaware of this. Some seem to have forgotten that the golden calf-idols installed by Jeroboam were the principal features of the so-called worship at Bethel; and that all of the shrines here mentioned were notorious for the debaucheries and immoralities that were carried on there.

Gilgal shall go into captivity, and Bethel shall come to naught ..." The scholars tell us that there is a play upon the words Gilgal and Bethel in the Hebrew text, incapable of being translated into English; but many approximations of it have been given. One of the most interesting is that of Wellhansen, as cited by Hammershaimb: "Gilgal will go to the gallows, and Bethel will become the devil's."[18]

Beersheba ..." It is a little surprising to find this place mentioned as one of the shrines frequented by the Israelites, since it was in the extreme southern part of Judah and quite a long distance from the Northern Kingdom. Barnes observed that:

"Jeroboam I pretended that it was too much for Israel to go up to Jerusalem; and yet Israel thought it not too much to go to the extremest point of Judah toward Idumaea, perhaps four times as far south of Jerusalem, as Jerusalem lay from Bethel!"[19]