The name sounds tautological, as if one of the two Els is the terebinth oak and the other the god, but in fact it is really quite straightforward. The god in question is the god of Beit-El (Bethel), but Beit-El is not Beit-El = "the house of god", as it is normally translated. Rather it is the word for a stone image of the deity, which in Greek is baetylus, though that word is known to have been of Semitic origin.
The god is named as El, the Kena'ani father-god, but Judges 4:4/5 tells us exactly who the god - or goddess as it transpires - really was: Devorah, the bee-goddess, an aspect of the Earth-goddess who is at once the mother of fertility and the guardian of the dead: Chavah (Eve) in one of her manifold carnations, Tamar in another - and more likely Tamar here, because it was under a palm-tree that Devorah delivered her oracle in Judges 4. The Greeks knew her as Demeter, the Romans as Ceres.
Genesis 35:5 has Ya'akov setting up an altar at El Beit-El.
See BEIT-EL (BETHEL) for more details of the place.
Genesis 35:5 has Ya'akov setting up an altar at El Beit-El.
See BEIT-EL (BETHEL) for more details of the place.
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