The Hebrew Beth-Aven (Strong's H1015) means 'house of iniquity' or 'house of emptiness/wickedness.' It is a polemical name used by the prophets Hosea and Amos for Bethel — the site where Jeroboam I erected golden calves for Israel to worship. The name Bethel means 'house of God,' but the prophets deliberately rechristened it Beth-Aven — house of idolatry — as a judgment on its corruption.
The prophetic renaming of Bethel as Beth-Aven is a devastating theological statement. Bethel had been consecrated ground — Jacob encountered God there and named it 'the house of God' (Genesis 28:19). But after Jeroboam's calves, the sacred became profane. Hosea uses the name repeatedly to condemn Israel's apostasy: the calf of Bethel, once worshiped as Israel's deliverer, would be carried away as plunder (Hosea 10:5-6). The lesson is sober — no place, however holy in history, is immune from becoming a Beth-Aven when the people abandon the living God.