the monument was transferred to that of the city, and Luz itself was
called the Beth-el, or "House of God." The god worshipped there when the
Israelites first entered Canaan appears to have been entitled On,--a
name derived, perhaps, from that of the city of the Sun-god in Egypt.
Bethel was also Beth-On, "the temple of On," from whence the tribe of
Benjamin afterwards took the name of Ben-Oni, "the Onite." Beth-On has
survived into our own times, and the site of the old city is still known
as Beitîn.

It is not needful to follow the adventures of Jacob in Mesopotamia. His
new home lay far away from the boundaries of Palestine, and though the
kings of Aram-Naharaim made raids at times into the land of Canaan and
caused their arms to be feared within the walls of Jerusalem, they never
made any permanent conquests on the coasts of the Mediterranean. In the
land of the Aramaeans Jacob is lost for awhile from the history of
patriarchal Palestine.

When he again emerges, it is as a middle-aged man, rich in flocks and
herds, who has won two wives as the reward of his labours, and is
already the father of a family. He is on his way back to the country
which had been promised to his seed and wherein he himself had been
born. Laban, his father-in-law, robbed at once of his daughters and his
household gods, is pursuing him, and has overtaken him on the spurs of
Mount Gilead, almost within sight of his goal. There a covenant is made
between the Aramaean and the Hebrew, and a cairn of stones is piled up
to commemorate the fact. The cairn continued to bear a double name, the
Aramaean name given to it by Laban, and the Canaanitish name of Galeed,
"the heap of witnesses," by which it was called by Jacob. The double
name was a sign of the two populations and languages which the cairn
separated from one another. Northward were the Aramaeans and an Aramaic