An unobtrusive, unimpressive scene, almost indistinguishable even to the curious eye of the archæologist ‘in the maze of undistinguished hills which encompass it’—with nothing to attract the eye, and nothing to fire the imagination; large slabs of bare rock traversed by a well-worn thoroughfare; ‘no religio loci, no awful shades, no lofty hills’—so is the site of Bethel described by the modern traveller. Yet this was none other than the House of God; this was the very gate of heaven.