Sow to yourselves in righteousness, Reap according to kindness. Break up your fallow ground; For it is time to seek Yahweh, Until he comes and rains righteousness on you.
Bethaven is a name that was given by God to the city of Bethel where the calf worship was inaugurated and where the calf was set up as a national symbol of worship in the Northern Kingdom. Going back just a little bit in history, when Solomon's son Rehoboam took over at the death of Solomon as the king over all of the land of Israel, the Northern Kingdom, the ten tribes, when he began to seek to exact heavy taxation upon them, rebelled and said, "What do we have to do with the house of David? To thy tents, O Israel." And so Rehoboam, the son of Solomon, was left with only two tribes to rule over. The remaining tribes became the Northern Kingdom and they were Israel; the two southern tribes were called Judah. And Jeroboam, who was elected by the people to be the king over Israel, feared that if the people would go back to Jerusalem to worship God, as was required in the law, that when they get back to Jerusalem and they'd see the temple and they'd see the worship and all, that their hearts would be drawn away from loyalty to him and drawn back to Rehoboam and the kingdom of David.So Jeroboam, in Bethel, had made this image of a calf and he set it up there in Bethel with an altar to it, and he said, "This is the God that brought you out of Egypt. This is the God that you're to worship." And he inaugurated calf worship there in the Northern Kingdom. So, Bethel was the city were calf worship was inaugurated and this Bethaven. Aven is the Hebrew word for wickedness; Beth is the word for house. So God calls Bethel, which is actually the house of God, "Bethel." El being God. God changed the name and He said, "It's not Bethel; it's Bethaven. It's the house of wickedness." They have taken the house of God and made it really the house of wickedness. And so, "The inhabitants of Samaria shall fear because of the calves of the house of wickedness," rather than the house of God--Bethaven.