Jacob’s Ladder

A young man lies alone on a rocky hillside, his head on a stone. No tent. No family. No way back. He closes his eyes. And the sky opens.

Jacob is on the run. He has tricked his father Isaac and taken the blessing meant for his brother Esau, and Esau has sworn to kill him. So Jacob leaves Beersheba, in the far south, heading north for Haran, hundreds of miles away, where his mother’s brother Laban lives. He travels light. Whatever else he carries, he carries the weight of what he has done. One evening the sun goes down while he is still out in open country. There is no town, no inn. So he takes one of the stones lying there, puts it under his head, and lies down to sleep.

And Jacob dreams. He sees a stairway set up on the earth, and its top reaches all the way to heaven. And the angels of God are going up and coming down on it. Up and down, between heaven and this lonely patch of ground. And there, above it, stands the Lord himself.

“I am the Lord, the God of your grandfather Abraham and the God of Isaac. The land you are lying on, I will give to you and to your descendants. They will be like the dust of the earth, spreading out west and east, north and south. Through you and your descendants all the families of the earth will be blessed. Look, I am with you. I will watch over you wherever you go, and I will bring you back to this land. I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.”

Think about who God is speaking to. Not a hero. A runaway. A cheat. A young man who just lied to his blind father and used God’s name to do it. And God does not begin with a lecture. He begins with a promise. The same promise he gave to Abraham, and to Isaac. Now it is Jacob’s. And then, the words a lonely traveller needs most. I am with you. I will not leave you.

Jacob wakes with a start. “Surely the Lord is in this place, and I did not know it.” And he is afraid. “How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God. This is the gate of heaven.” Early in the morning, he takes the stone he slept on and stands it upright as a pillar. He pours oil on top of it, marking it as holy. He names the place Bethel, which means house of God. Before that, the town nearby was called Luz.

Then Jacob makes a vow. And listen to how he says it. “If God will be with me, and watch over me on this journey, and give me bread to eat and clothes to wear, so that I come back to my father’s house in peace, then the Lord will be my God. This stone will be God’s house. And of everything you give me, I will give a tenth back to you.” If. Jacob is still bargaining. His faith is new and small. But it has begun. And God, who has just promised everything, does not seem to mind starting there.

The word usually translated ladder appears only here in the whole Hebrew Bible, so scholars are not completely sure what it looked like. Many think stairway or ramp fits better, and some compare it to the great stepped temple towers of ancient Mesopotamia, called ziggurats, whose stairways were thought to link earth and heaven. Centuries later, Jesus picked up this dream. In John’s Gospel he tells Nathanael, you will see heaven open, and the angels of God going up and coming down on the Son of Man.

Jacob’s dream at Bethel is found in Genesis chapter twenty-eight, verses ten to twenty-two. Jacob went to sleep feeling alone, and woke up knowing God had been there all along. So here is something to think about tonight. Where might God be with you, in a place you never expected to find him?