I saw the Lord standing beside the altar, and he said, "Strike the tops of the pillars, that the thresholds may shake; and break them in pieces on the head of all of them; and I will kill the last of them with the sword: there shall not one of them flee away, and there shall not one of them escape.
"The Lord standing beside the altar..." The notion that this is a reference to the pagan altars (plural) in the temple at Bethel is false. It is utterly inconceivable that the Lord would have taken a place beside the golden calf in the so-called "temple," at Bethel, which, in the first place, is not called "a temple."  There was a pagan shrine there, of course, but no temple.  There were many altars there and at other places in Israel; and no one of them could possibly have been designated as "the altar" associated with the history of the Jews.  Many arguments are suggested in order to justify the application of this verse to Bethel, such as: "it is the only holy place at which tradition locates Amos during his ministry;"[1] "the chief temple of Northern Israel was located at Bethel;"[2] "Jacob saw the Lord at Bethel;"[3] "there is a close connection with the preceding chapter 8, (Amos 8:14) which mentions Bethel in the last verse,"[4] etc.; but none of these alleged arguments has any weight whatever.  As C. G. Keil noted: