10 Jacob left Beer-sheba and went toward Haran. 11 He came to a certain place and stayed there for the night, because the sun had set. Taking one of the stones of the place, he put it under his head and lay down in that place. 12 And he dreamed that there was a ladder set up on the earth, the top of it reaching to heaven; and the angels of God were ascending and descending on it. 13 And the Lord stood beside him and said, “I am the Lord, the God of Abraham your father and the God of Isaac; the land on which you lie I will give to you and to your offspring; 14 and your offspring shall be like the dust of the earth, and you shall spread abroad to the west and to the east and to the north and to the south; and all the families of the earth shall be blessed in you and in your offspring. 15 Know that I am with you and will keep you wherever you go, and will bring you back to this land; for I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.” 16 Then Jacob woke from his sleep and said, “Surely the Lord is in this place—and I did not know it!” 17 And he was afraid, and said, “How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.”
18 So Jacob rose early in the morning, and he took the stone that he had put under his head and set it up for a pillar and poured oil on the top of it. 19 He called that place Bethel.
Genesis 28:10-19 is the story of the dream of Jacob. Most Old Testament scholars view the history of the texts as a combination of historical sources. The source of the story is E in 28:10-12 and 17-18, while J is in 13-18, 19.
Genesis 28:10-12, 17-18, 20-22 is the story of the dream of Jacob, the story of Jacob’s Ladder. The source is E. Jacob is traveling from Beer-sheba toward Haran. However, he finds a little place in the middle of nowhere to rest for the night. He used a stone for a pillow. As occurs often in these stories, we have an account of a dream and a dreamer. The “ladder” is a stairway or ramp, like the Babylonian ziggurat. It extended from earth to heaven. As is also typical of the stories in E we see angels. This time, angels, messengers from God, ascended and descended upon the stairway. These heavenly beings go out from the presence of God to do work on earth. The mystery of the divine comes near to us.[1] If you do not have a personal experience with angels, you are with most believers. The point is always whether we have encountered God.[2] We have here a unique moment of revelation for Jacob. Yes, God is present everywhere, which one affirms with the notion of the omnipresence of God. However, we also need events that disclose who God is and what God wants of us. God is present in this place and in this unique way for Jacob. The God of the covenant becomes the God of Jacob.[3] This revelation occurs in a vision or illumination that communicates the divine will.[4] The subjective response of Jacob was fear, a hint of ancient piety as the immediate response to the experience of the divine. Jacob had this experience in the middle of nowhere. Jacob refers to the place as “awesome” or “fearful.” He made an altar and poured oil over it.
10 Jacob left Beer-sheba and went toward Haran. 11 He came to a certain place and stayed there for the night, because the sun had set. Taking one of the stones of the place, he put it under his head and lay down in that place. 12 And he dreamed, Genesis is full of dreams and dreamers. Such dreams are gifts of God and thus beyond human control.
For some readers, this may well be a time to consider the role of dreams in our lives. Most of us do not have the type of grand dreams while asleep as Jacob seems to have had.
Sleep hath its own world,
A boundary between the things misnamed
Death and existence: Sleep hath its own world,
And a wide realm of wild reality,
And dreams in their development have breath,
And tears, and tortures, and the touch of joy.[5]
He had a dream that there was a ladder (sullam, its only occurrence in the Bible, stairway, ramp, or the Babylonian ziggurat[6]). The delightful ditty, “We Are Climbing Jacob’s Ladder,” has surprisingly little to do with our biblical text! The ladder was set up on the earth, the top of it reaching to heaven; and the angels of God (typical of E stories). They are messengers or heavenly beings who go out from God’s presence to do the work of God on earth. There is an extremely close connection in Genesis between angels and God; at some points, the angels are direct appearances of the LORD God. In angels, “the mystery is near to us.”[7] We must leave aside the foolish question whether and how there is or may be a special experience of angels. We do not put the question rightly. Human beings can have no autonomous or abstract experience of angels in and for themselves. The subjects of this kind of experience can only be ideas, ghosts, or figments of the imagination, or even demons. It is best not to speak of any experience of angels at all. The real question is whether any encounter with God and the living Christ one can have that does not take place in the presence and participation of angels. To say this would be to say that where God engaged in the work and revelation of mercy, the heavenly creation also surround, accompanies, and serves God in that way. This notion avoids either over-estimating or under-estimating their earthly occurrence. Thus, as in this passage, the angel has a close link to God. Such proximity to God is what makes this being an angel. They are also witnesses to God on this earth.[8] Angels were ascending and descending on it. When we consider the multiplicity of biblical ideas of revelation, the awareness of revelation already contains an element of reflection. The suggestion of P. Eicher and M. Seckler that we must distinguish between revelation in experience and revelation in reflection is helpful in that it clarifies the initially confusing variety of phenomena that today go by the name of revelation. Reflection does not begin on the level of systematic theological conceptualization. Rather, the experience of illumination and especially its communication of content to others, involves reflection. This is especially true when the experience is ascribed to a deity that is known already from elsewhere as the author. In this case, the communication is by God in a vision. The fact of communication and the content are then accepted as an expression of divine initiative and a declaration of the divine will even when God is not the content and theme of the experience.[9] 17 And he was afraid (same Hebrew verbal root as awesome), a hint of ancient piety, as the immediate effect of this experience is to shudder, and said, “How awesome (same Hebrew verbal root as afraid) is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.” Having duped his father, stolen the blessing and run from the rage of his brother, Jacob receives a glorious vision of God. He is not worthy. Alienated from those closest to him, God appears and makes assures him of the divine presence. Despite how it has happened, the result has been the will of God. Estrangement, fear, and guilt are the setting of Jacob unexpectedly encountering God and discovering he is not alone. God is with Jacob where he is. The schemer becomes a worshipper.
Jacob was afraid and revered God’s presence in what he had thought was the middle of nowhere. He comes to the realization that this is none other than the place where heaven and earth meet. This is the house of God and the gate of heaven. He realizes that God has invaded his world. He is not alone on this journey. the lesson here is that any place can become holy ground for us. Any place can become a Promised Land if we receive it as such. Every place we are can be “awesome” place. In one sense, it matters little where we go. If we all found the same type of places beautiful, human population would become more concentrated than it already is. Let us consider it this way. Every part of the world has its beauty: highlands or lowlands, woods or plains, on the sea or land or down among the crystals of waves or high in a balloon in the sky; through all the climates, hot or cold, storms and calms, everywhere and always we are in God's eternal beauty and love. If our eyes are open, we will see its beauty.[10]
Afoot and light-hearted I take to the open road,
Healthy, free, the world before me,
The long brown path before me leading wherever I choose.
Henceforth I ask not good-fortune, I myself am good-fortune,
Henceforth I whimper no more, postpone no more, need nothing,
Done with indoor complaints, libraries, querulous criticisms,
Strong and content I travel the open road.[11]
Many believers in God (I hesitate to say all), have had the experience somewhere in their journey that heaven has invaded our ordinary realm, that we are not alone in our world, and that the mysterious presence of God accompanies us. For Christians, the name of this mysterious presence is Jesus Christ. If heaven ever invaded this earth, it has done in the man, Jesus of Nazareth. As the risen Lord, he walks the journey of our lives with us.[12] Jacob is perceptive enough, finally, to realize that something important has happened, when Jacob least expected it.
What Jacob does next suggest he takes the event seriously. 18 So Jacob rose early in the morning, and he took the stone that he had put under his head and set it up for a pillar and poured oil on the top of it. … Sacred pillars are a crucial element of ancient worship, especially in Canaan.
One of the things I find intriguing in this story is that while Jacob is traveling toward Haran, he finds a little place in the middle of nowhere to rest for the night. He uses a stone for his pillow. Yet, in this nowhere place he has a dream or vision. The stories in Genesis are full of dreams and dreamers, and God is often the one who inspiring them. “It's the dream afraid of waking, that never takes the chance,” as Amanda McBroom wrote, and Bette Middler so beautifully sang. Billy Joel in his “River of Dreams” also had a beautiful way of putting the importance of the dream. One may have to pass through mountain of faith and the valley of fear to find the dream. The dream may well be a sign that we have lost something important to us. Others may have stolen it from us. The dream is a sign we are looking for something sacred to us. We can only hope that we find at least partial fulfillment of the dream in this life. In this case, the dream has a ladder, which we might think of as a stairway or ramp. We might think of a structure like the Babylonian ziggurat. The stairway connects heaven and earth. The distance between them is not as great as usual. Angels, typical of the E stories, ascended and descended the stairway. These heavenly beings go out from the presence of God to do work on earth. They bring the mystery of the divine near to us.[13] They are messengers from God. In the Bible, their presence lets us know that God is nearby. We make an important theological affirmation when we affirm that God is present everywhere. Yet, such awareness does not negate the importance of an event that discloses who God is and what God wants. An event occurs in a moment and at a place. Such an event can be anywhere. Such an event is an encounter with God.[14] The God of the covenant becomes the God of Jacob.[15] This revelation occurs in a vision or illumination that communicates the divine will.[16] The revelation is first of the Lord standing beside Jacob. The promise of the presence of the Lord is a keynote of the Bible. The Presence is enigmatic, surprising, and dangerous. Yet, the Presence is also for our good. Jacob has discovered the accompanying presence of the Lord when he least expected it. We have the assurance of divine accompanying in times of turmoil or in times of quiet. Jacob the deceiver receives a word of grace. We are right to affirm the omnipresence of the Lord. Yet, we need such events in our lives when God shows up.[17] The Lord is also the God of Abraham and Isaac. Jacob is not receiving a revelation from a new divine being. This revelation relies upon prior knowledge of the God of Abraham and Isaac.[18] In the canonical context, the promise is still land and progeny. The promises of God on this point are unconditional. In Genesis 12:1-4a, the Lord tells Abram to leave his land people and go to a land the Lord will show him. The Lord will make of Abram a great nation that will bring blessing to others. The Lord will bless the families of the earth through his family. In Genesis 22:15-18, the Lord will bless the nations through the nation that will come through Abraham. In Genesis 28:3-4, Isaac tells Jacob that God Almighty will bless Jacob with the blessing of Abraham. Families of the earth will experience blessing through this promise! In this revelation, the Lord will be with them. The Lord will keep them, a common theme we find reflected in the priestly blessing of Numbers 6:24, “The Lord bless you and keep you.” We then have the powerful image that the Lord will lead Jacob home. For those who have left home literally or spiritually, the promise is powerful. The subjective response of Jacob to the presence and revelation of God is fear. Such a response is typical of ancient piety when one is in the presence of the divine. He thus refers to the place as “awesome” or “fearful.” He makes an altar out of the stone that had been his pillow during the night. Jacob, aware that the Lord is in this place, calls the place Bethel, or House of God. It would become one of the worship centers of the northern Kingdom of Israel when it split from the southern kingdom of Judah. Josiah would destroy this ancient religious center as an act of restoring faithfulness in his time. The story of the vision of Jacob has an important lesson for us. Any of us with open minds and hearts can realize we are not alone on this journey of life. Heaven invades our ordinary realm. It may well come in the form of a dream God has given us. For the Christian, the unveiling of this mysterious presence carries the name of Jesus Christ. Heaven descended to earth in the man, Jesus of Nazareth, who, as the risen Lord, walks the journey of life with us.[19]
Jacob then offers prayer to God that reveals that he has not learned very much from the event of this divine visitation. The event has not changed his spiritual orientation. He is as natural as a human being can be. Jacob is not living out of a spiritually attuned way of life at this point. The prayer is not at all about what God wants, only about what Jacob hopes to get out of the encounter. 20 Then Jacob made 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 clothing to wear, 21 so that I come again to my father’s house in peace, then the Lord shall be my God, 22 and this stone, which I have set up for a pillar, shall be God’s house; and of all that you give me I will surely give one-tenth to you.” He vows to give a tithe if the God protects him, even as Abraham gave the gift of a tithe at Salem in 14:20.
Self-centered prayers are common in the Bible. “If … then” prayers are dangerous. If God will do certain things, then Jacob will accept God as his God. In Jacob, we have as natural a person as we could expect to find in the Bible. He looks only to his own instincts to interpret life, and before this dramatic event in his relationship with God, he has already made a mess of things. He is more crooked than some country roads I have been on in Indiana. He has cheated his brother Esau out of his birthright, deceived his blind old man into giving him the blessing meant for Esau, and is now on his way to stay with relatives because things have gotten too hot for him back home. No matter. God sees something valuable in this schemer that even Jacob himself does not perceive.
We need to admit that many of our prayers are silly, harmful, childish, misguided, and selfish. Allow me to offer a few humorous examples.
A pious but cranky old lady was annoyed because her neighbors forgot to ask her to go on their picnic. On the morning of the event, they suddenly realized their affront and sent a little boy to ask her to come along. “It’s too late now,” she snapped. “I’ve already prayed for rain.”
Two young boys were spending the night at their grandparents’ the week before Christmas. At bedtime, the two boys knelt beside their beds to say their prayers when the youngest one began praying at the top of his lungs: “I PRAY FOR A NEW BICYCLE ... I PRAY FOR A NEW PLAYSTATION ... I PRAY FOR A NEW BASEBALL GLOVE ...” The older brother leaned over and nudged the younger brother and said, “Why are you shouting your prayers? God isn’t deaf.” To which the little brother replied, “No, but Grandma is!”
Announcement in a church bulletin for a national Prayer and Fasting Conference: “The cost for attending the Fasting & Prayer Conference includes meals.”
We do not often get prayer. We want to feel the truth of “sweet hour of prayer,” but often, we find it hard to consider five minutes as “sweet.” Through the years, I have found myself returning to the insights of Harry Emerson Fosdick, in his little book The Meaning of Prayer (1915). The illustrations are dated, but the ideas are not. One of his first points concerns the naturalness of prayer. When I first read this book in my twenty’s, my reaction was that he has to be kidding. It did not feel natural to me. Yet, as I thought about it, it makes sense. We human beings want to thank someone for the good things of life. We get in trouble, we want to beg someone to help us. Of course, such prayers can be selfish, but he said it also speaks to how natural prayer is to human life. It is not that we are bad people or even ungodly. We just do not “get” it. Prayer can seem out of place and foolish, even for church people.
A movie nominated for several Academy Awards, The Apostle, portrays a Pentecostal preacher. It portrays him, warts and all. He has a wandering eye when it comes to women, and he can get incredibly angry. He can also preach. If you have ever heard of the movie Elmer Gantry, he is not that. He believes what he preachers. At one point, he offers a prayer. He is angry. His wife has left him. The church has ejected him. He wants an answer. The prayer is angry. Let us hear this prayer.
Somebody, I say somebody, has stolen my wife and my church. I want to yell at you. Give me a sign or something. Blow this pain out of me. Give it to me tonight, Lord God. If you won’t give me back my wife, give me peace. I don’t know who has been fooling with me, you or the devil. I am confused, I am mad. I love you Lord, but I am mad. So, deliver me tonight, Lord. What should I do? Tell me. Should I lay hands on myself? What should I do? I know I am a sinner once in a while. A womanizer. But I am your servant, ever since I was a little boy and you raised me from the dead. I always call you Jesus, and you always call me Sonny. What shall I do? This is Sonny talking now. [He puts his ear toward heaven as if to hear a voice. His mother receives a telephone call from a neighbor due to his yelling at God. She says:] Ever since he was a little boy, sometimes he would talk to the Lord and sometimes he would yell at the Lord. Tonight, he is yelling. Sonny continues: Sometimes you talk to me. Tonight, you are not talking to Sonny.
I love that last phrase. Sometimes he talks with God. Sometimes, he yells at God. Whether we are, in a sense, spiritual or unspiritual, we pray. Especially in times of danger, want, desire, and emergency. Other times, we will pray as a matter of routine, such as at meals. Too often, though, even for the best of us, our prayers are more about what the person wants than about what God wants.
I am supposing that many of us are not so sure about prayer. Even your poorest prayer is better than no prayer. Please do not think that you must get it all just right, and then you are somehow qualified to pray.
Let us discuss natural, unspiritual prayers.[20] I offer a few examples.
Here, for example, is a prayer (loosely speaking) for the New Year: We are quite ready to admit that we have on occasion failed to live up to our highest standards, and we shall try to do a bit better in the new year.
Here is a prayer of confession (sort of) that he includes: We have done wrong, but we hope nobody will find out.
Here is one about being a soul-winner (so to speak): Don’t let our witness for Christ make things awkward for us.
A prayer (as it were) before the sermon: O God, I hope the sermon doesn’t last more than 15 minutes.
A prayer (in a manner of speaking) to be spared: O Lord, if I can get away with it this time, I promise I’ll never steal again.
A prayer (as we say) of a man about to be married: May she be always useful and always beautiful, full of interesting conversation, witty in private and sparkling in public, blind to my faults, tolerant with my follies, never weary, never demanding, enjoying her own company when necessary, not getting too involved with female friends, performing miracles with her housekeeping allowance, and always grateful that I married her.
One comes from Jesus’ parable of the rich fool who prayed, more to himself than to God, Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry (Luke 12:19).
Another is from the story of Adam and Eve’s sin in the garden, where they respond to God: The man said, The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit from the tree, and I ate. And the woman said, The serpent tricked me, and I ate (Genesis 3:12, 13).
Jacob’s if-then prayer after his visitation by God in the night.
The point I make is that we ought to pray, even when the best prayer we can offer at this moment is a complaint or a self-centered demand. The fact is, when we are talking to God, even if doing so resentfully or greedily, we are, in fact, making ourselves available for conversation with God. Offering such prayers may help us to see that such natural, unspiritual prayers are missing the point of the greater riches a relationship with God offers. An interesting example is Psalm 106. The psalmist had been talking about the people of Israel in the wilderness. He tells of God getting them out of Egyptian slavery and saving them from the pursuing forces by drowning that army in the Red Sea. But then, instead of trusting God to care for them, they start demanding drink and food and especially meat. The psalmist then observes, “And [God] gave them their request; but sent leanness into their soul” (Psalm 106:15 KJV). That is the problem with our prayers when they are motivated only by what we want instead of by a desire to find what God wants. If we never mature in our prayers, God may even give us what we ask, but it can come at the price of leanness of soul, of finding no lasting satisfaction.
So, what can we take away from all of this? Simply this: Our prayers are to help us, not to help God. They are not to win God over to our side, to push God to do something we want. God already knows what we want. Nevertheless, our requests of God mold and shape us. Thus, we should ask for the presence of the Holy Spirit so that we can cease to be a natural man or woman and become a person guided by God’s Spirit.
Genesis 28:13-16, 19 has the Lord suddenly standing beside Jacob. The story is from J. The Lord takes a stand beside Jacob and identifies whom the Lord is. The Lord is also the God of Abraham and Isaac. Jacob is not receiving a revelation from a new divine being. This revelation relies upon prior knowledge of the God of Abraham and Isaac.[21] We have seen the covenant with Abraham in Genesis 12:1-4a and 22:15-18. Jacob has heard this promise from his father Isaac in Genesis 28:3-4. The promise of the presence of the Lord is a keynote of the Bible. The Presence is enigmatic, surprising, and dangerous. Yet, the Presence is also for our good. The promise is still land and progeny. The promises of God on this point are unconditional. Families of the earth will experience blessing through this promise! The Lord will be with them. The Lord will keep them, a common theme we find reflected in the priestly blessing of Numbers 6:24, “The Lord bless you and keep you.” The Lord will lead Jacob home. For those who have left home literally or spiritually, the promise is powerful. As Jacob awakens, he is aware the Lord is in this place, and thus calls the place Bethel, or, House of God. Jacob has discovered the accompanying presence of the Lord when he least expected it. We have the assurance of divine accompanying in times of turmoil or in times of quiet. Jacob the deceiver receives a word of grace. We are right to affirm the omnipresence of the Lord. Yet, we need such events in our lives when God shows up.[22] Any of us with open minds and hearts can realize we are not alone on this journey of life. Heaven invades our ordinary realm. For the Christian, the unveiling of this mysterious presence carries the name of Jesus Christ. Heaven descended to earth in the man, Jesus of Nazareth, who, as the risen Lord, walks the journey of life with us.[23]
13 And the Lord stood beside him and said, the Lord now speaking words of self-identification and promise, “I am the Lord,[24] the God of Abraham your father and the God of Isaac. Thus, Jacob is not receiving some new god, but the God of his grandfather and father. This patriarchal theophany relies upon prior knowledge of God. In this case, it relies upon the knowledge of God given to Abraham.[25] The LORD renews with Jacob the covenant promises made to Abraham (Genesis 12:1-4a and 22:15-18). The LORD’s words also activate the recent blessing given to Jacob by his father Isaac (28:3-4). We should especially note the assurances of the Lord throughout the passage. The presence of the Lord with Jacob, with Israel and with all humanity is the keynote of the whole Bible. While that Presence is sometimes enigmatic, it is real. God’s showing up in our lives can be surprising or even dangerous, but for our good, as we accept God’s invitation to become fully what God is making us and calling us to be. The land on which you lie I will give to you and to your offspring; 14 and your offspring shall be like the dust of the earth, and you shall spread abroad to the west and to the east and to the north and to the south; and all the families of the earth shall be blessed in you and in your offspring. The promise of land and posterity is a pre-Mosaic tradition. At this point, at least, the Lord asks for nothing in return. Jacob is perceptive enough, finally, to realize that something very important has happened, when Jacob least expected it. What Jacob does next suggests he takes the event seriously. 15Know that I am with you and will keep you wherever you go, the keeping (meaning also in Hebrew guarding, giving heed to and watching over) by the Lord of us is a common theme in the Bible. For example, take note of the priestly blessing of Numbers 6:24 (“The LORD bless you and keep you”). And will bring you back to this land; there would be a time of coming home, for Jacob and for later Israelites/Jews and so many others in exile away from home. This promise appeals to anyone who has been away (literally or spiritually) — listen anew to the poignant “Coming Home” theme in Antonin Dvorak’s 9th symphony. The Lord would not leave Jacob — the Lord would fulfill every promise. Jacob would have another unanticipated but reassuring divine encounter many years later. For I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.” Whatever the Lord promises, the Lord carries out. These promises (unlike some other biblical promises) are unconditional. The Lord speaks; it will happen. It does not depend here on Jacob’s (or Israel’s or our) response. Jacob received what he needed this night. He would have the very presence of the Lord. No matter where he traveled, no matter what dangers awaited him in front of and behind him on the journey, the Lord was going to be with him and "keep him." Wherever Jacob was, even in a trackless, faceless, and nameless place where a stone makes for a pillow, the Lord was going to be there. The lesson to learn here is that every place is potentially sacred. The Lord’s presence with Jacob, with Israel and with all humanity is the keynote of the whole Bible. While that Presence is sometimes enigmatic, it is real. The Lord’s showing up in our lives can be surprising or even dangerous, but for our good, as we accept the Lord’s invitation to become fully what the Lord is making us and calling us to be. For Christians, Jesus of Nazareth is our Immanuel/Emmanuel (the Hebrew quite literally means “with-us (is) God”). We forget all too easily that one of the big lessons of the Incarnation is that God has supreme interest in our finite and temporal lives. If we allow the Spirit to pour over us, in us, and through us, this means we might see God in the person next to us or hear God in the cry of a baby, the laughter at a party, or the wind rustling in the trees. We might feel God by embracing someone. We find God in the ordinary ebb and flow of life. We may simply need to quitet our busy bodies and minds, sensing the presence of God infiltrating through us, realizing how near God is to us. Emmanuel, God-with-us.[26]
16 Then Jacob woke from his sleep and said, “Surely the Lord is in this place—and I did not know it!”Jacob discovered the Lord’s presence and promise when he had least expected it. Even in times of turmoil with people or circumstances (or especially in those times) the promise-making-and-keeping God is present with us, too. We do not yet know how our lives will unfold, but divine encounters (including times of quiet divine presence) encompass our whole span. 19a He called that place Bethel (house of God). It was Luz before than (v. 19b), although Abram migrated to this place (12:8). Bethel is highly significant in the history of God’s people. See Genesis 35 (after Jacob returned from Haran) for a parallel passage.[27] This place carries the name of the supreme Canaanite deity, El, whose cult formed the foundation of patriarchal religion. We see this in 17:1-2, the covenant established between Abram and El Shaddai, traditionally rendered “God Almighty,” a name we also find in 14:22. When the name of the patriarch Jacob is changed to the Israel (32:28 and again at 35:10), the Canaanite-Hebrew cult of El was preserved for perpetuity in western religion (and biblically etymologized as “The One Who Strives with El/God” but which may also mean “El/God Strives”). After the death of King Solomon, the Northern Kingdom of Israel would split away from the Southern Kingdom of Judah and establish a primary altar at Bethel (later biblical writers would thoroughly castigate Israel for abandoning the practice of going to the Jerusalem temple for sacrificial acts). Josiah would destroy this ancient religious center as an act of restoring faithfulness in his time. The deceiver, Jacob, receives a word of grace. This is not simply an expression of pious emotion. On the contrary, it describes the objective condition that lies at the basis of the whole covenant between God and humanity. The covenant the Lord made with Abraham and Isaac becomes real for Jacob as well. Had the Lord not been at this place in this way, and had it not really been this Beth-El, then the dreams of this man, Jacob, that he had at this place, would have been idle fancies. The covenant would quickly become empty. Without such events of revelation, the whole covenant between God and humanity as a definite covenant with definite people would have been invalid both at that time and for all time.[28] To put it directly, if the covenant of God with humanity does not have the fullness and meaning of a particular time and place, it would become an empty and formless universality.
[1] Adolph Schlatter in his book on Christian Dogma in 1923, p. 87.
[2]
[3]
[4]
[5] —Lord Byron, “The Dream,” Stanza 1.
[6] Hebrew lexicographers take the word to be derived from a putative verbal root s-l-l meaning "lift up, cast up" (BDB, 699-700), thus "ladder" or "stairway" or "ramp." Jacob may have been dreaming of a ziggurat, the sacred stepped tower that was a prominent feature of Mesopotamian temples from as early as the 22nd century B.C. The Tower of Babel, also, may have been a biblical reminiscence of a ziggurat, especially since both it and Jacob's ladder are described as reaching from earth to heaven (11:4; 28:12), echoing the name of the most famous ziggurat in the ancient world, Etemenanki, "House that is the Foundation of Heaven and Earth."
[7]Adolph Schlatter in his book on Christian Dogma in 1923, p. 87
[8] Barth (Church Dogmatics III.3 [51.3], 477-479)
[9]
[10] John Muir, John of the Mountains: The Unpublished Journals of John Muir, ed. Linnie Marsh Wolfe (1938, reprinted by University of Wisconsin Press, 1979), 299.
[11] --Walt Whitman, from "Song of the Open Road," in The Works of Walt Whitman (Wordsworth Editions, 1995), 136.
[12] Elizabeth Achtemeier Preaching From the Old Testament, p. 65.
[13] Adolph Schlatter in his book on Christian Dogma in 1923, p. 87
[14]
[15]
[16] (
[17]
[18]
[19] Elizabeth Achtemeier Preaching From the Old Testament, p. 65.
[20] In the middle of the last century, British author David Head wrote a wonderful little book titled He Sent Leanness: A Book of Prayers for the Natural Man.
[21]
[22]
[23] Elizabeth Achtemeier Preaching From the Old Testament, p. 65.
[24] This proper name of Israel's patron deity will be considered a manifestation of the high god El — or simply God — until the start of the Mosaic period of Israelite religion, some 250 years after the events depicted in Genesis (see Exodus 3:13-15; 6:3). The process by which the Israelite storm deity Yahweh supplanted the Canaanite supreme deity El as Israel's divine patron was attenuated, uncertain and never complete. Indeed, when the patriarch Jacob's name is changed to the ethneme Israel (32:28 and again at 35:10), the Canaanite-Hebrew cult of El was preserved for perpetuity in western religion (and biblically etymologized as "The One Who Strives with El/God" but which may also mean "El/God Strives"). The ancient and once-vigorous Canaanite deity El remains a (largely silent) feature of the descendants of biblical religion to this day (a deus otiosus, "idle god," in the words of biblical scholar Frank Moore Cross; cf. Cross's extensive discussion of El's identity and roles in Israelite religion in his Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic [Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1973], 1-75; the phrase deus otiosus occurs on page 22).
[25]
[26] Inspired by Anthony de Mello, Sadhana: A Way to God: Christian Exercises in Eastern Form (Image: 1984), 46.
[27] When Jacob returns to Bethel from his years with his uncle Laban in Paddan-aram (Genesis 35:1), he will erect and anoint another pillar (35:14) and name the place Bethel a second time (35:15). The confusing repetition likely stems from multiple traditions relating to the cult center at Bethel that have become attached to the cycle of Jacob stories. Anointing was the typical way of setting aside an object or person for sacred purposes in the Bible (cf. Exodus 29:29; 40:15; Leviticus 8:10-11; 1 Samuel 2:10; 10:1; Isaiah 45:1; etc.). The Hebrew verb translated "anoint" is mashach, root of the passive participle used as a nominal form mashiach, "anointed (one)" which, via Greek and Latin transliterations, becomes the hotly contested term "messiah." At the period of the Jacob stories, the term has not yet acquired the overtones that will help to splinter Judaism during the Greco-Roman period.
[28]
that's a very broad statement about Jacob's dream in the last paragraph.
ReplyDeleteYes, Barth may get a bit extreme here. I think the point is that events or encounters like this confirm the truth of the covenant. Without event or encounter in revelation, covenant would be an empty and abstract notion.
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