(All scripture from the World English Bible, ebible.org, all rights reserved)
“Jacob went out from Beersheba, and went toward Haran. He came to a certain place, and stayed there all night, because the sun had set. He took one of the stones of the place, and put it under his head, and lay down in that place to sleep. He dreamed and saw a stairway set upon the earth, and its top reached to heaven. Behold, the angels of God were ascending and descending on it.”
(Genesis 28:10-12)
Jacob left home and travelled all that day. He stopped at the end of the day to sleep. He had arrived in Haran, having come from Beersheba. He had travelled north and crossed the Land.
Jacob probably picked a place that looked good to him. Not really thinking about it. But this place was picked by the Lord. God led him to this specific spot. Some believe it had been a spot that Abraham had previously set up an altar and worshipped the Lord. Regardless, this was a ‘certain spot’. God had picked it on purpose.
Jacob dreams a dream here. God often uses dreams to communicate. He did in the Word and He still does today. The dreams will always accord with the Word. They will never contradict it. God doesn’t contradict Himself. But sometimes He needs dreams because our waking minds refuse to listen. When God has something to say, God will say it. He will get it to us however He needs to. He did it in the Old Covenant (1 Kings 11:9; Genesis 41:1–7) . He did it in the Renewed Covenant (Matthew 1:20; Acts 10:9-16). Don’t discount your dreams, but compare them to the Word and ask Holy Spirit about them. God might be telling you something you’ve been ignoring.
The Torah: A Women’s Commentary writes: ‘When Jacob departs from home with the intangible gifts of the blessing and the birthright, he exhibits his youthful adaptability by using a stone for a pillow and sleeping alone in the mountains blanketed in darkness. These mountains—which form the western boundary of the Jordan River Valley—serve as a threshold to the realm of the Divine that Jacob recognizes as he sleeps. As he awakes and speaks, the confidence and self-certainty of the young Jacob become apparent. This vision where Jacob sees the angels of God will be balanced and extended by his nocturnal wrestling with a divine being on the east side of the Jordan prior to his eventual return home (32:4–33). The transformation that he undergoes is evident in the change of tone in which he speaks to God on either side of the Jordan. The youthful Jacob stipulates a list of terms (28:20–21) while the older Jacob pleads to God to save his family despite his unworthiness (32:10–13). A parallel transformation is evident in Rachel and Leah, who initially employ language as the means of their competition, but ultimately speak with one voice when deciding to embark on a journey away from home. 10–11. The journey begins. Previously, Jacob’s mother, Rebekah, had secured his father’s blessing for him through a stratagem; then she had ensured her son’s safe passage from home. In so doing, Rebekah had voiced two intentions for Jacob’s departure: safety and a wife (27:4–28:4). Thus he now journeys with the dual intent of finding safety in his uncle Laban’s house and finding a suitable wife. On his way from Beersheba to his uncle’s in Haran, Jacob stops at an unidentified place. 12–15. Scholars have noted that the ladder in Jacob’s dream is most likely a ziggurat, a tower known from the temples of Mesopotamia. This “ladder” serves as a bridge between heaven and earth upon which angels ascend and descend—thus indicating the dialogic nature of communication between the two realms. Thus Jacob has begun a double journey: a dream journey toward increasing proximity to God parallels his physical wanderings across the horizontal plane of space. Jacob encounters his angels while traveling. The stations between home and exile have a corollary in the rungs between heaven and earth.’
The sage Rav Hirsch writes: ‘V. 10 Although it has already said above: פדנה ארם, nevertheless it still begins again with Jacob’s leaving the parental home, because that introduces the independent life of Jacob. Thus Jacob went from Beer-Sheba towards Haran. באר שבע, which had been so pregnant with meaning for Isaac; where it had been brought home to him that — although not גרות — עבדות had begun. But where, when he had gone into isolation of his own free will, he had found not only quiet and peace, but recognition. This Beer-Sheba of rest and honour, Jacob gave up and wandered forth to Haran. V. 11 ויפגע במקום, this can not simply mean he chanced to come to a place. Firstly because then it would have to say בְּמקום not בַּמקום further, פגע ב- never means just a meeting, but always such a meeting where the one makes an important impression on the other. Hence it is also used for the intentional going to meet with weapons, or to make a request, to attack, or to urge. So that here, too, it must have been a place to which he had been meaningfully attracted and held. V. 12 סלם, a ladder was shown him, (סלם from סלל to go up) so there was a means of communication upwards from the earth, and it is מֻצב, placed there, did not come there by itself, nor just by chance, it had been placed there by a Higher power, and indeed ארצה, to the earth, the power and the will that set it was not to be looked for on earth, but above, it is set from the height above down to the earth, וראשו מגיע השמימה, nevertheless its purpose is primarily not only from heaven to earth, but to go up from earth to heaven. Such was the first trend of thought which was shown to him so that, first of all, in general, that the whole life on earth, including accordingly, human life, his own life also, has its goal, not in the plains — not from Beer-Sheba to Haran — but in the heights, and set from the heights; that everything earthly is invited from above to work itself upwards to a heavenly high goal; that this goal and this striving upwards to it is no fairy tale invented by Man, no erroneous theory originating on earth, but is a most substantial reality established from heaven itself. (Cf. the verses in ב״ר: סיני סולם זה — סולם זה כבש, מוצב ארצה זה מזבח — and חולין 91b. רחבו של סולם שמנה אלפים פרסאות wide beyond the whole world does the ladder reach, and its lowest rung can be mounted everywhere on earth). והנה, a second set of ideas. He sees מלאכי אלקים angels of God, God’s messengers, beings on earth who are called, by God’s command to be active in the life on earth, sees them going up, coming down, going up to get the directions for their work, and coming down against him (which is the way one authority takes the meaning of the word literally to be, which opinion seems to us to be justified by the following explanation). He sees that the fate of men is not made on earth by the material world. He sees messengers of God, and notices that these messengers of God go up the ladder to get a picture of the ideal humanity, how human beings really should be, and then come down and compare what they find here below, with that picture to decide, according to that standard, whether to behave in a friendly assisting manner towards any particular member of mankind, or in very much the reverse way. And so — to quote the words of our sages in Chulin 91b — עולין ומסתכלין בדיוקנו של מעלה ומסתכלין בדיוקנו של מטה בעו לסכיניה they ascended and saw the picture depicted of him up above, and came down and considered the picture he actually made here below, as this is further worked out in ב״ר: ישראל אשר בד אתפאר את הוא שאיקוגיך חקוק למעלה ,עולין למעלה ומוצאין איקנין שלו ויורדין למטה ומוצאין אותו ישן. “up above they found his picture engraved as Israel glorifying God, they came down and found him fast asleep”, — sleeping at the very place which should have awakened in his mind the thoughts of his glorious mission, which thoughts would surely have kept him excitedly awake — so that on that account “they intended to endanger his life”, מיד, but at once, והנה ה׳ נצב עליו.’
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