Jacob’s Ladder

April 29, 2001

 

This passage starts in Chapter 28. Jacob rests his head against a stone and starts to dream. Did he bump his head too hard?! That might explain the heavy visuals.

 

He starts dreaming about a ladder set up on earth with the top extending into heaven. The angels of God were ascending and descending it. The first striking feature is that the angels are using the ladder to move between heaven and earth. After all, the angels would merely need to flutter their wings and fly at will.

 

This appears to be a contradiction, yet remember this occurs in a dream. Anything is possible in a dream world. The message, as I view it, is that the ladder represents a conduit between heaven and earth. It’s God’s way of meeting Jacob halfway, or perhaps quarter of the way. God doesn’t bring Jacob up to heaven, nor does he let him ascend or descend the ladder. He lets him view the angels traversing it, albeit in a dream.

 

The ladder is an object humans can easily relate to, certainly more tangible than flying angels. We all use a ladder at some point in our lives. The metaphysical realities of heaven, represented by God’s helpers (the angels) are revealed via their traversals of this conduit. The higher world meets the lower one.

 

We don’t know what the angels were doing. We could even speculate that God himself might have traversed the ladder. Regardless, the movements of the angels are a source of revelation to Jacob. It’s not what they’re doing that’s fundamentally important, but rather how they’re doing it.

 

Was this God’s way of saying that the angels are really not too different from us, that they climb ladders as we do? This is a possibility, but more likely, it was a message that life in heaven is interconnected with life on earth. Perhaps the angels flew onto the high part of the ladder when they were in heaven and climbed down to earth. Jacob would have thus seen them performing a “human activity”, though it would be difficult to explain how a human could climb a ladder that’s resting against the air of heaven!

 

The fact this all occurs in a dream is the second striking feature. Dreams are human comfort zones for the enactment of multi-sensory dramas. They occur within the confines of the human mind and are private encryptions of emotions, thoughts, desires, visions, and interwoven realities. In the Bible, God often uses dreams as a source of private revelation. He doesn’t wish to reveal to the entire world what he has to say, only to Jacob. And in another respect, it’s a test for Jacob, for dreams can just as readily be a source of confusion or falsehoods as they can be for revealing truths. This is one method to test Jacob’s faith in God, or on another level, his trust in his self to sponsor truthful dreams.

 

The third striking feature is what God says to Jacob in the dream. In verse 13, where God stands next to Jacob, he says “I am the Lord, the God of Abraham thy father (didn’t he mean grandfather? Was God a little tipsy?!), and the God of Isaac. The land whereon thou liest, to thee will I give it, and to thy seed. And thy seed shall be as the dust of the earth, and thou shall spread abroad to the west, and to the east, and to the north, and to the south. And in thee and in thy seed shall all the families of the earth be blessed. And, behold, I am with thee, and will keep thee whithersoever thou goest, and will bring thee back into this land; for I will not leave thee, until I have done that which I have spoken to thee of”.

 

This is a continuation of the covenant God made with Abraham. In many respects, it’s a reaffirmation of God’s commitment to the ancient Hebrews: that the land of Israel belongs to them, that they will be blessed, and that God will be with them. And God clearly considers Jacob to be the future leader of this people. Yet this decree goes even further than God’s words to Abraham because he tells Jacob the Hebrews will spread to the four corners of the earth (to influence other nations? Or perhaps to spread the word of God?).

 

One can’t also help but notice that God’s words bear a striking resemblance to Isaac’s words in verses 3-4 (also speaking to Jacob): “And God almighty bless thee, and make thee fruitful, and multiply thee, that though mayest be a congregation of peoples; and give thee the blessing of Abraham to thee, and to thy seed with thee; that thou mayest inherit the land of thy sojournings, which God gave unto Abraham”.

 

One interpretation is that Jacob has a dream about his father’s wishes. It would be a projective visualization of what Isaac has in mind for his son and the Jews. Another interpretation is that Isaac has a prophecy about what will happen in the future, and Jacob’s dream is a full-scale revelation of God’s blueprint for the fulfillment of that prophecy.

 

Whatever the case, Jacob awakens and exclaims, “Surely the Lord is in this place; and I knew it not.” He felt God’s presence, but didn’t know what occurred. Did he have a lucid dream, one where a higher reality flowed into his mindscape, but did not comprehend what happened to him, or where he was?

 

Then, he becomes even more excited in verse 17: “How full of awe is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven”. Jacob named the place Beth El, or house of God. He took the stone his head rested against and placed it in an upright position as a pillar (representing the house of God).

 

But the last 2 verses, known as Jacob’s vow, are really the most explosive! In these verses, Jacob declares that if God will be with him, and if he returns to his father’s house in peace, then the Lord will be his God and the stone (pillar) will be his house. In other words, Jacob establishes conditions for acceptance of his God and house. This is not unconditional love here, just as it’s not a permanent state that God will be with him (see above, end of verse 13, where God declares he will only be with Jacob until he has completed all his tasks).

 

The last sentence is also a revelation: “and of all that Thou shalt give me I will surely give the tenth unto Thee”. The ‘tenth’ must refer to the tithe. It shows the exchange of services, the if-then-else algorithmic relational conditions between God and Jacob. Jacob, in essence, will only accept 90% of the services and goods offered by God. He feels obligated to return 10% as a tribute.

 

By David Epstein