Luz

Biblical Text

Luz appears several times in Scripture as the former name of Bethel.

• Genesis 28:19: While fleeing from his brother Esau on the way to Haran, Jacob slept at a certain place and dreamed of a ladder reaching to heaven (Jacob's Ladder). On waking, he named the place Bethel ("house of God"), and the text adds, "but the name of that city was called Luz at the first."
• Genesis 35:6; 48:3: Jacob returns to "Luz, which is in the land of Canaan, that is, Bethel," and builds an altar there. Late in life he tells Joseph that God Almighty appeared to him at Luz and blessed him.
• Joshua 16:2; 18:13: In the allotment of the land, Luz serves as a reference point for the boundaries of the tribes of Ephraim and Benjamin. Joshua 18:13 specifies "Luz, which is Bethel."
• Judges 1:22–26: When the house of Joseph attacked Bethel (formerly called Luz), they spared a man who showed them the entrance to the city, along with his family. That man went into the land of the Hittites, built a new city, and called it Luz as well.

Background

The same Hebrew word, luz (לוּז), appears in Genesis 30:37 as the name of a tree. The New Korean Revised Version renders it "apricot tree," while scholars generally identify it as the almond tree. Many hold that the place name derives from this tree, though this is not certain.

Bethel was a city in the hill country north of Jerusalem. It is widely identified with the area of modern Beitin, but some scholars propose other sites. The location of the new Luz founded in the land of the Hittites in Judges 1 is unknown.

Significance in Scripture as a Whole

The name Luz appears mainly in a contrast: the place was formerly called Luz, but it became Bethel after an encounter with God. The renaming expresses the confession that God revealed himself at that place. The name Luz does not reappear in the New Testament. However, Jesus' words, "ye shall see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of man" (John 1:51), are widely read as recalling the story of the ladder at Bethel.

Interpretive Questions

• Are Luz and Bethel the same place? Joshua 16:2 reads "from Bethel to Luz," which seems to treat the two as separate places. Some scholars therefore hold that Luz was the city, while Bethel was the nearby site of Jacob's altar, and that the name later came to cover the whole city. Others regard the two as interchangeable names for the same place.
• Extrabiblical traditions: Later Jewish literature reportedly contains a legend describing Luz as a city that the angel of death cannot enter. Another tradition gives the name luz to a small bone in the body from which a person will be raised at the resurrection. Neither appears in the biblical text.

In the Korean Church

Korean preachers sometimes use Genesis 28 as a text to illustrate life before and after meeting God, drawing on the contrast that "Luz became Bethel."