'And Jacob went out from Beer-sheba, and went toward
Haran. And he lighted upon a certain place, and tarried
there all night, because the sun was set; and he took
of the stones of that place, and put them for his pillows,
and lay down in that place to sleep. And he dreamed, and
behold a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it
reached to heaven; and behold the angels of God ascending
and descending on it. And, behold, the Lord stood above
it, and said, I am the Lord God of Abraham thy father,
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 shalt 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 in all places whither thou
goest, and will bring thee again into this land; for I
will not leave thee, until I have done that which I have
spoken to thee of. And Jacob awaked out of his sleep,
and he said, Surely the Lord is in this place; and I
knew it not. And he was afraid, and said, How dreadful
is this place! this is none other but the house of God,
and this is the gate of heaven. And Jacob rose up early
in the morning, and took the stone that he had put for
his pillows, and set it up for a pillar, and poured oil
upon the top of it. And he called the name of that place
Beth-el: but the name of that city was called Luz at the
first. And Jacob vowed a vow, saying, If God will be with
me, and will keep me in this way that I go, and will give
me bread to eat, and raiment to put on, So that I come
again to my father's house in peace; then shall the Lord
be my God; And this stone, which I have set for a pillar,
shall be God's house; and of all that Thou shalt give me I
will surely give the tenth unto Thee.'--GENESIS xxviii. 10-22.
From Abraham to Jacob is a great descent. The former embodies the
nobler side of the Jewish character,--its capacity for religious ideas;
its elevation above, and separation from, the nations; its
consciousness of, and peaceful satisfaction in, a divine Friend; its
consequent vocation in the world. These all were deep in the founder of
the race, and flowed to it from him. Jacob, on the other hand, has in
him the more ignoble qualities, which Christian treatment of the Jew
has fostered, and which have become indissolubly attached to the name
in popular usage. He is a crafty schemer, selfish, over-reaching, with
a keen eye to the main chance. Whoever deals with him has to look
sharply after his own interests. Self-advantage in its most earthly
form is uppermost in him; and, like all timid, selfish men, shifty ways
and evasions are his natural weapons. The great interest of his history
lies in the slow process by which the patient God purified him, and out
of this 'stone raised up a worthy child to Abraham.' We see in this
context the first step in his education, and the very imperfect degree
in which he profited by it.
1. Consider the vision and its accompanying promise. Jacob has fled
from home on account of his nobler brother's fierce wrath at the trick
which their scheming mother and he had contrived. It was an ugly,
heartless fraud, a crime against a doting father, as against Esau.
Rebekah gets alarmed for her favourite; and her fertile brain hits upon
another device to blind Isaac and get Jacob out of harm's way, in the
excuse that she cannot bear his marriage with a Hittite woman. Her
exaggerated expressions of passionate dislike to 'the daughters of
Heth' have no religious basis. They are partly feigned and partly
petulance. So the poor old blind father is beguiled once more, and
sends his son away. Starting under such auspices, and coming from such
an atmosphere, and journeying back to Haran, the hole of the pit whence
Abraham had been digged, and turning his back on the land where God had
been with his house, the wanderer was not likely to be cherishing any
lofty thoughts. His life was in danger; he was alone, a dim future was
before him, perhaps his conscience was not very comfortable. These
things would be in his mind as he lay down and gazed into the violet
sky so far above him, burning with all its stars. Weary, and with a
head full of sordid cares, plans, and possibly fears, he slept; and
then there flamed on 'that inward eye, which is the bliss of solitude'
to the pure, and its terror to the evil, this vision, which speaks
indeed to his then need, as he discerned it, but reveals to him and to
us the truth which ennobles all life, burns up the dross of
earthward-turned aims, and selfish, crafty ways.
We are to conceive of the form of the vision as a broad stair or
sloping ascent, rather than a ladder, reaching right from the sleeper's
side to the far-off heaven, its pathway peopled with messengers, and
its summit touching the place where a glory shone that paled even the
lustrous constellations of that pure sky. Jacob had thought himself
alone; the vision peoples the wilderness. He had felt himself
defenceless; the vision musters armies for his safety. He had been
grovelling on earth, with no thoughts beyond its fleeting goods; the
vision lifts his eyes from the low level on which they had been gazing.
He had been conscious of but little connection with heaven; the vision
shows him a path from his very side right into its depths. He had
probably thought that he was leaving the presence of his father's God
when he left his father's tent; the vision burns into his astonished
heart the consciousness of God as there, in the solitude and the night.
The divine promise is the best commentary on the meaning of the vision.
The familiar ancestral promise is repeated to him, and the blessing and
the birthright thus confirmed. In addition, special assurances, the
translation of the vision into word and adapted to his then wants, are
given,--God's presence in his wanderings, his protection, Jacob's
return to the land, and the promise of God's persistent presence,
working through all paradoxes of providence and sins of His servant,
and incapable of staying its operations, or satisfying God's heart, or
vindicating His faithfulness, at any point short of complete
accomplishment of His plighted word.
We pass from the lone desert and the mysterious twilight of Genesis to
the beaten ways between Galilee and Jordan, and to the clear historic
daylight of the gospel, and we hear Christ renewing the promise to the
crafty Jacob, to one whom He called a son of Jacob in his after better
days, 'an Israelite indeed, in whom is no guile.' The very heart of
Christ's work was unveiled in the terms of this vision: From henceforth
'ye shall see the heaven opened, and the angels of God ascending and
descending upon the Son of man.' So, then, the fleeting vision was a
transient revelation of a permanent reality, and a faint foreshadowing
of the true communication between heaven and earth. Jesus Christ is the
ladder between God and man. On Him all divine gifts descend; by Him all
the angels of human devotion, consecration, and aspiration go up. This
flat earth is not so far from the topmost heaven as sense thinks. The
despairing question of Jewish wisdom, 'Who hath ascended up into
heaven, or descended? ... What is his name, and what is his son's name,
if thou canst tell?'--which has likewise been the question of every age
that has not been altogether sunk in sensual delights--is answered once
for all in the incarnate and crucified and ascended Lord, by and in
whom all heaven has stooped to earth, that earth might be lifted to
heaven. Every child of man, though lonely and earthly, has the
ladder-foot by his side,--like the sunbeam, which comes straight into
the eyes of every gazer, wherever he stands. It becomes increasingly
evident, in the controversies of these days, that there will remain for
modern thought only the alternative,--either Jesus Christ is the means
of communication between God and man, or there is no communication.
Deism and theism are compromises, and cannot live. The cultivated world
in both hemispheres is being more and more shut up to either accepting
Christ as revealer, by whom alone we know, and as medium by whom alone
we love and approach, God; or sinking into abysses of negations where
choke-damp will stifle enthusiasm and poetry, as well as devotion and
immortal hope.
Jacob's vision was meant to teach him, and is meant to teach us, the
nearness of God, and the swift directness of communication, whereby His
help comes to us and our desires rise to Him. These and their kindred
truths were to be to him, and should be to us, the parents of much
nobleness. Here is the secret of elevation of aim and thought above the
mean things of sense. We all, and especially the young, in whose veins
the blood dances, and to whom life is in all its glory and freshness,
are tempted to think of it as all. It does us good to have this vision
of the eternal realities blazing in upon us, even if it seems to glare
at us, rather than to shine with lambent light. The seen is but a thin
veil of the unseen. Earth, which we are too apt to make a workshop, or
a mere garden of pleasure, is a Bethel,--a house of God. Everywhere the
ladder stands; everywhere the angels go up and down; everywhere the
Face looks from the top. Nothing will save life from becoming, sooner
or later, trivial, monotonous, and infinitely wearisome, but the
continual vision of the present God, and the continual experience of
the swift ascent and descent of our aspirations and His blessings.
It is the secret of purity too. How could Jacob indulge in his craft,
and foul his conscience with sin, as long as he carried the memory of
what he had seen in the solitary night on the uplands of Bethel? The
direct result of the vision is the same command as Abraham received,
'Walk before Me, and be thou perfect.' Realise My presence, and let
that kill the motions of sin, and quicken to service.
It is also the secret of peace. Hopes and fears, and dim uncertainty of
the future, no doubt agitated the sleeper's mind as he laid him down.
His independent life was beginning. He had just left his father's tents
for the first time; and, though not a youth in years, he was in the
position which youth holds with us. So to him, and to all young
persons, here is shown the charm which will keep the heart calm, and
preserve us from being 'over exquisite to cast the fashion of uncertain
evils,' or too eagerly longing for possible good. 'I am with thee'
should be enough to steady our souls; and the confidence that God will
not leave us till He has accomplished His own purpose for us, should
make us willing to let Him do as He will with ours.
2. Notice the imperfect reception of the divine teaching. Jacob's
startled exclamation on awakening from his dream indicates a very low
level both of religious knowledge and feeling. Nor is there any reason
for taking the words in any but their most natural sense; for it is a
mistake to ascribe to him the knowledge of God due to later revelation,
or, at this stage of his life, any depth of religious emotion. He is
alarmed at the thought that God is near. Probably he had been
accustomed to think of God's presence as in some special way associated
with his father's encampment, and had not risen to the belief of His
omnipresence. There seems no joyous leaping up of his heart at the
thought that God is here. Dread, not unmingled with the superstitious
fear that he had profaned a holy place by laying himself down in it, is
his prevailing feeling, and he pleads ignorance as the excuse for his
sacrilege. He does not draw the conclusion from the vision that all the
earth is hallowed by a near God, but only that he has unwittingly
stumbled on His house; and he does not learn that from every place
there is an open door for the loving heart into the calm depths where
God is throned, but only that _here_ he unwittingly stands at the gate
of heaven. So he misses the very inner purpose of the vision, and
rather shrinks from it than welcomes it. Was that spasm of fear all
that passed through his mind that night? Did he sleep again when the
glory died out of the heaven? So the story would appear to suggest.
But, in any case, we see here the effect of the sudden blazing in upon
a heart not yet familiar with the Divine Friend, of the conviction that
He is really near. Gracious as God's promise was, it did not dissipate
the creeping awe at His presence. It is an eloquent testimony of man's
consciousness of sin, that whensoever a present God becomes a reality
to a worldly man, he trembles. 'This place' would not be 'dreadful,'
but blessed, if it were not for the sense of discord between God and me.
The morning light brought other thoughts, when it filled the silent
heavens, and where the ladder had stretched, there was but empty blue.
The lesson is sinking into his mind. He lifts the rude stone and pours
oil on it, as a symbol of consecration, as nameless races have done all
over the world. His vow shows that he had but begun to learn in God's
school. He hedges about his promise with a punctilious repetition of
God's undertaking, as if resolved that there should be no mistake.
Clause by clause he goes over it all, and puts an 'if' to it. God's
word should have kindled something liker faith than that. What a fall
from 'Abram believed in the Lord, and He counted it to him for
righteousness'! Jacob barely believed, and will wait to see whether all
will turn out as it has been promised. That is not the glad, swift
response of a loving, trusting heart. Nor is he contented with
repeating to God the terms of his engagement, but he adds a couple of
clauses which strike him as being important, and as having been
omitted. There was nothing about 'bread to eat, and raiment to put on,'
nor about coming back again 'in peace,' so he adds these. A true
'Jew,'--great at a bargain, and determined to get all he can, and to
have no mistake about what he must get before he gives anything! Was
Jesus thinking at all of the ancestor when He warned the descendants,
in words which sound curiously like an echo of Jacob's, not to be
anxious 'what ye shall eat,' nor 'what ye shall put on'? As the vow
stands in the Authorised Version, it is farther open to the charge of
suspending his worship of God upon the fulfilment of these conditions;
but it is better to adopt the marginal rendering of the Revised
Version, according to which the clause 'then shall the Lord be my God'
is a part of the conditions, not of the vow, and is to be read 'And
[if] the Lord will be ... then this stone ... shall be,' etc. If this
rendering be adopted, as I think it should be, the vow proper is simply
of outward service,--he will rear an altar, and he will tithe his
substance. Not a very munificent pledge! And where in it is the
surrender of the heart? Where is the outgoing of love and gratitude?
Where the clasping of the hand of his heavenly Friend with calm rapture
of thankful self-yielding, and steadfastness of implicit trust? God did
not want Jacob's altar, nor his tenths; He wanted Jacob. But many a
weary year and many a sore sorrow have to leave their marks on him
before the evil strain is pressed out of his blood; and by the
unwearied long-suffering of his patient Friend and Teacher in heaven,
the crafty, earthly-minded Jacob 'the supplanter' is turned into
'Israel, the prince with God, in whom is no guile.' The slower the
scholar, the more wonderful the forbearance of the Teacher; and the
more may we, who are slow scholars too, take heart to believe that He
will not be soon angry with us, nor leave us until He has done that
which He has spoken to us of.