Genesis 28:10-22

C.
JACOB.-ISRAEL, THE WRESTLER WITH GOD, AND HIS WANDERINGS
FIRST SECTION

Jacob’s journey to Mesopotamia, and the heavenly Ladder at Bethel

Genesis 28:10-22

10And Jacob went out from Beer-sheba, and went toward Haran. 11And he lighted upon a certain place, and tarried there all night, because the sun was set; and he took of the stones [one of the stones] of that place, and put them [it] for his pillows, and lay 12down in that place to sleep. And [then] he dreamed, and behold a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached [was reaching] to heaven: and behold, the angels of God 13[were] ascending and descending on it. And behold, the Lord stood [was standing] above it: and said, I am the Lord God [Jehovah, the 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; 14And thy seed shall be as the dust of the earth, and thou shalt spread abroad to the west [evening], and to the east [morning], and to the north [midnight], and to the south [midday]: and in 15thee 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 [everywhere] 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 [promised thee].

16And Jacob awaked out of his sleep, and he said, Surely the Lord is in this place, and I knew it not. 17And he was afraid, and said, How dreadful [awful] is this place! this is none other but the house of God, and this [here] is the gate of heaven. 18And 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. 19And he called the name of that place Bethel [house of God]; but the name of that city was called [earlier] Luz at the first. 20And Jacob vowed a vow, saying, If God [Elohim] 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, 21So that I come again to my father’s house in peace [in prosperity]; then shall the Lord 22[Jehovah] 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.

PRELIMINARY REMARK

Jacob’s divine election, as well as the spirit of his inward life and the working of his faith, first appear in a bright light in his emigration, his dream, and his vow.

EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL

1. Jacob’s emigration, his night-quarters, and dream (Genesis 28:10-15). Went out from Beer-sheba.—The journey from Beer-sheba to Haran leads the pilgrim through a great part of Canaan, in a direction from south to north, then crossing the Jordan, and passing through Gilead, Bashan, and Damascus, he comes to Mesopotamia. It was the same journey that Abraham, and afterwards Eliezer, had already made, well known to the patriarchal family. And he lighted upon a certain place.—Not after the first day’s journey, but after several days’ journey (see Genesis 22:4). Bethel (see Genesis 28:19), or originally Luz, Λουσά, was situated in the mountain of Ephraim, on the way from Jerusalem to Shechem, probably the present Beitin; more than three hours north of Jerusalem (see Dictionaries, especially Winer, and books of travels, particularly Robinson, ii. pp. 125–130). He lighted upon.—By this expression the place in which he took up his night-quarters, in the open air, is distinguished from the city already existing. And tarried there all night.—After the sun went down, indicating an active journey. Even at the present date it frequently occurs that pilgrims in those countries, wrapped in their cloaks, spend the night in the open air, during the more favorable seasons of the year. He took of the stones.—“One of the stones.” A stone becomes his pillow. Thus he rests upon the solitary mountain, with no covering but the sky. And he dreamed.—In his dream a strange night-vision comes to him, and it belongs to his peculiar character that in this condition he is susceptible of this dream. “Here he sleeps upon a hard pillow, exiled from his father’s house, with deep anxiety approaching an uncertain future, and intentionally avoiding intercourse with his fellow-men; a stranger, in solitude and without shelter.” Delitzsch. The dream-vision is so glorious, that the narrator represents it by a threefold הִנֵּה. The participles, too, serve to give a more vivid representation. The connection between heaven and earth, and now especially between heaven and the place where the poor fugitive sleeps, is represented in three different forms, increasing in fulness and strength; the ladder, not too short, but resting firmly on the earth below and extending up to heaven; the angels of God, appearing in great numbers, passing up and down the ladder as the messengers of God; ascending as the invisible companions of the wanderer, to report about him, and as mediators of his prayers; descending as heavenly guardians and mediators of the blessing; finally, Jehovah himself standing above the ladder, henceforth the covenant God of Jacob, just as he had hitherto been the covenant God of Abraham and Isaac. [It is a beautiful and striking image of the reconciliation and mediation effected by the Angel of the Covenant. See John 1:51. A. G.]—Jehovah, the God of Abraham.—According to Knobel, this is an addition of the Jehovistic enlargement, which does not fit the connection here, where the question is simply about Jacob’s protection and guidance. Just as if this could be detached from his theocratic position and importance! First of all, Jacob must now know that Jehovah is with him as his God; that the God of Abraham—his ancestor in faith—and the God of Isaac, will henceforth also prove himself to be the God of Jacob. The land whereon thou liest.—The ground on which he sleeps as a fugitive, is to be his possession, to its widest limits. Canaan, from the heights of Bethel, extends in all directions far and wide. His couch upon the bare ground is changed into an ideal possession of the country. As the dust of the earth (see Genesis 22:17; Genesis 26:4). —To one sleeping upon the bare ground, this new symbol of the old promise was peculiarly striking. Thou shalt spread abroad.—The wide, indefinite extension to all quarters of the heavens, introduces the thought, that all the nations of the earth are to be blessed in him. [That which is here promised transcends the destiny of the natural seed of Abraham. Murphy, p. 386. A. G.] In the light of this promise, the personal protection and guidance here promised to him has its full significance and certainty. Jehovah guarantees the security of his journey, of the end sought, of his return, and finally, of the divine promises given to him. But the security against Esau is not yet clearly given to him; still the expression: I will not leave thee, until—does not mean, that he would at one time forsake him, but indicates the infallible fulfilment of all the promises. [The dream-vision is a comprehensive summary of the history of the Old Covenant. As Jacob is now at the starting-point of his independent development, Jehovah now standing above the ladder, appears in the beginning of his descent, and since the end of the ladder is by Jacob, it is clear that Jehovah descends to him, the ancestor and representative of the chosen people. But the whole history of the Old Covenant is nothing else than, on one side, the history of the successive descending of God, to the incarnation in the seed of Jacob, and, on the other, the successive steps of progress in Jacob and his seed towards the preparation to receive the personal fulness of the divine nature into itself. The vision reaches its fulfilment and goal in the sinking of the personal fulness of God into the helpless and weak human nature in the incarnation of Christ. Kurtz. A. G.]

2. Jacob’s awaking, his morning solemnity, and vow (Genesis 28:16-22). Surely the Lord.—The belief in the omnipresence of God was a part of the faith of Abraham’s house. And that God was even present here, he did not first learn on this occasion (as Knobel seems to think), but it is new to him that Jehovah, as the covenant God, revealed himself not only at the consecrated altars of his fathers, but even here. Jacob (who was not to take, and did not desire to take, any of the Canaanitish women), probably from religious zeal, avoided taking up his abode for the night in the heathen city, Luz. Generally, indeed, he would feel ill at ease in a profane and heathenish country. The greater, therefore, is his surprise, that Elohim here reveals himself to him, and that as Jehovah. How dreadful (see Exodus 3:5)—House of God.—The dreadfulness of the place results from the awe-inspiring presence of the God of revelation. The place, therefore, is to him a house of God, a Bethel, and the Bethel is to him at the same time the door of heaven. He feels as a sinner rebuked and punished at this sacred place; he trembles and is filled with holy awe, but not disheartened. He did not tremble before men nor wild beasts, but now he trembles before Jehovah in his sanctuary, but it is the trembling of a pious confidence. And he set it up for a pillar.—Calvin: “A striking monument of the vision.” We must here distinguish between the stone for a pillar, as a memorial of divine help, as Joshua and Samuel erected pillars (Genesis 31:45; Genesis 35:14; Joshua 4:9; Joshua 4:20; Joshua 24:26; 1 Samuel 7:12); and the anointing of the stone with oil, which consecrated it to Jehovah’s sanctuary (Exo 20:30). In the same manner, we must distinguish, on the one hand, between the consecrated stone of Jacob, which marked the place as an ideal house of God and a future place for sacrifice (see Genesis 35:15; comp. Genesis 35:7), and in an unknown-typical prophecy the place of the future tabernacle, and, on the other hand, the anointed stones worshipped with religious veneration (whence the expression: “Oelgötze,” idols of oil), and especially the stones supposed in the heathen world to have fallen from heaven, by whose names we are reminded of Bethel, but whose worship, however, is not to be derived from Jacob’s conduct at Bethel (see Keil, p. 302; Knobel, p. 239; Delitzsch, p. 460; Winer, “Stones”). Called the name.—Knobel: “According to the Elohist, he assigns the name at his return (Genesis 35:15).” The naming at the last-quoted place, however, clearly expresses the execution of his purpose to sacrifice upon the stone, and thus to change it from an ideal to an actual Bethel, a place for the worship of God. It is evident that this naming of Luz, or the place near by, was of importance only to Jacob and his house, and that the Canaanites called the city Luz now as before, until it became a Hebrew city. According to Keil, Jacob himself called the city Luz by the name of Bethel, but not the place where the pillar was erected. This would be very strange, and it is not proved by Genesis 48:3, where Jacob in Egypt characterizes in general the region of this divine revelation. From Joshua 16:2; Joshua 18:13, too, we receive the impression that Luz and Bethel, strictly taken, were two separate places; for Jacob had not passed the night in the city of Luz, but in the fields or upon the mountain, in the open air. Generally, the whole region was called Luz, in the time of the Canaanites, but Bethel at the time of the Israelites. Vowed a vow.—The vow seems to unite the faith in Jehovah with external and personal interests. But the following points should be considered: First, the vow is only an explanation and appropriation of the promise immediately preceding; second, it is a very modest appropriation of it (meat and drink and raiment); thirdly, Jacob emphasizes especially that point which the promise had left dark for his further trial (Genesis 32:7), viz., the desire to return to his paternal home in peace, i.e., especially, free from Esau’s avenging threats. The vow too: Then shall the Lord be my God, is emphatical, and explains itself by the following promises. Jacob fulfilled the first after his return (Genesis 35:7; Genesis 28:16), and Israel fulfilled it more completely. The tithes, that first appear in Abraham’s history (Genesis 14:20), were no doubt employed by Jacob, at his return, for burnt-offerings and thank-offerings and charitable gifts (see below) (Genesis 31:54; Genesis 46:1). [Murphy says, the vow of Jacob is a step in advance of his predecessors. It is the spirit of adoption working in him. It is the grand and solemn expression of the soul’s free, full, and perpetual acceptance of the Lord to be its own God. The words, If God will be with me, do not express the condition on which Jacob will accept God, but are the echo and thankful acknowledgment of the divine assurance, I am with thee. The stone shall be God’s house, a monument of the presence and dwelling of God with his people. Here it signalizes the grateful and loving welcome which God receives from his saints. The tenth is the share of all given to God, as representing the full share, the whole which belongs to him. Thus Jacob opens his heart, his home, and his treasure, to God. As the Father is prominently manifested in Abraham, and the Son in Isaac, so also the Spirit in Jacob. A. G.]

DOCTRINAL AND ETHICAL

1. Jacob’s pilgrimage. The patriarchs pilgrims of God (Hebrews 58:11).

2. From Isaac onward the night dream-vision is the fundamental form of revelation in the history of the patriarchs. Consecrated night-life: 1. As to the occasion: In the most helpless situation, the most solemn and glorious dream. 2. As to the form: A divine revelation in the dream-vision: a. miracles of sight, symbols of salvation; b. miracles of the ear, promise of salvation. 3. As to its contents: The images of the vision: a. the ladder; b. angels, ascending and descending; c. Jehovah standing above the ladder and speaking. The words of the vision, or the centre of the whole vision (Calov.: Verbum dei quasi anima visionis). General promise; individual promise.

3. The rainbow in the brightness of its colors, though soon vanishing away, proclaims the mercy of God, descending from heaven, and ruling over the earth; but Jacob’s ladder expresses more definitely the connecting and living intercourse between heaven and earth. The ladder reaching down from heaven to earth, designates the revelations, the words, and promises of God; the ladder reaching upwards from earth to heaven, indicates faith, sighs, confession, and prayer. The angels ascending and descending, are messengers and the symbols of the reality of a personal intercourse between Jehovah and his people.
4. The angelic world develops itself gradually. Here they appear in great numbers, after having been preceded by the symbolic cherubim and the two angels, in company with the Angel of the Lord: 1. These hosts, however, appear in the vision of a dream; 2. they ascend and descend on the ladder; it does not appear, therefore, that they flew. They do not speak, but Jehovah speaks above them. Nevertheless, they indicate the living communion between heaven and earth, the longing for another world, well known to the Lord in the heavens; the help and salvation which comes from above, and with which believing hearts are well acquainted, and the ascending and descending signifies that personal life is only mediated and introduced through personal life. They carry on this mediation, bearing upwards from earth reports and prayers, and from heaven to earth protection and blessings.
5. In this vision and guidance of Jacob the Angel of the Lord unfolds and reveals his peculiar nature in a marked antithesis. Jehovah is the one peculiar personality who, exalted above the multitude of angels, begins to speak, receives and gives the word.
6. Christ brings out the complete fulfilment of Jacob’s vision, John 1:52. From this exegesis of the Lord it follows that Jacob, now already as Israel (see John 1:47; Gen 28:49), not only beheld a constant intercourse between heaven and earth, but foresaw also, in an unconscious, typical representation, the gradual incarnation of God. Baumgarten: “The old fathers, and even Luther and Calvin, are too rash in regarding the ladder, directly and by itself, as the symbol of the mystery of the incarnation. The ladder itself cannot be compared with Christ, but Jacob, who beholds the ladder,” etc. No doubt, Jacob, in his vision, is a type of Christ, and Baumgarten correctly says: “As far as a dream (it is, the night-vision of a believer) stands below the reality, and things that happen but once below those that continually occur, so far Jacob stands below Christ.” Yet the mutual relation and intercourse between God and the elect, of which the advent of Christ is the result and consummation, was doubtless typified by this ladder.

7. From Jacob’s ladder we receive the first definite intimation that beyond Sheol, heaven is the home of man.
8. Just as Jacob established his Bethel at his lonely lodging-place, so Christians have founded their churches upon Golgothas, over the tombs of martyrs, and over crypts; and this all in a symbolic sense. The church, as well as Christians, has come out of great tribulations. But every true house of God is also, as such, a gate of heaven.
9. The application of oil also, which afterwards, in a religious sense, as a a symbol of the spirit, runs through the entire Scriptures, we find here first mentioned.
10. Jacob’s vow is to be understood from the preceding promise of the Lord. It was to be uttered, according to the human nature, in his waking state, and is the answer to the divine promise.
11. As to the tithes and vows, see Dictionaries. Gerlach: “The number ‘ten’ being the one that concludes the prime numbers, expresses the idea of completion, of some whole thing. Almost all nations, in paying tithes of all their income, and frequently, indeed, as a sacred revenue, thus wished to testify that their whole property belonged to God, and thus to have a sanctified use and enjoyment of what was left.

12. The idea of Jacob’s ladder, of the protecting hosts of angels, of the house of God and its sublime terrors, of the gate of heaven, of the symbolical significance of the oil, of the vow, and of the tithes—all these constitute a blessing of this consecrated night of Jacob’s life.
13. Jacob does not think that Jehovah’s revelation to him was confined to this place of Bethel. He does not interpret the sacredness of the place in a heathen way, as an external thing, but theocratically and symbolically. Through Jehovah’s revelation, this place, which is viewed as a heathen waste, becomes to him a house of God, and therefore he consecrates it to a permanent sanctuary.

14.Genesis 28:20. Briefly: If God is to me Jehovah, then Jehovah shall be to me God. If the Lord of the angels and the world proves himself to me a covenant God, then I will glorify in my covenant God, the Lord of the whole world. [There is clear evidence that Jacob was now a child of God. He takes God to be his God in covenant, with whom he will live. He goes out in reliance upon the divine promise, and yields himself to the divine control, rendering to God the homage of a loving and grateful heart. But what a progress there is between Bethel and Peniel. Grace reigns within him, but not without a conflict. The powers and tendencies of evil are still at work. He yields too readily to their urgent solicitations. Still grace and the principles of the renewed man, gain a stronger hold, and become more and more controlling. Under the loving but faithful discipline of God, he is gaining in his faith, until, in the great crisis of his life, Mahanaim and Peniel, and the new revelations then given to him, it receives a large and sudden increase. He is thenceforward trusting, serene, and established, strengthened and settled, and passes into the quiet life of the triumphant believer. A. G.]

HOMILETICAL AND PRACTICAL

See Doctrinal and Ethical paragraphs. Jacob, the third patriarch. How he inherited from his grandfather: 1. The active deeds of faith, and from his father; 2. the endurance of faith, and therefore even he appears; 3. as the wrestler of faith. Or the patriarch of hope in a special sense. Jacob’s pilgrimage. His couch upon the stony pillow becomes his Bethel. The night-vision of Jacob at Bethel becomes more and more glorious: 1. The ladder; 2. the angels ascending and descending; 3. Jehovah and his promise. The ladder: a. From heaven to earth: the word of God; b. from earth to heaven: prayer (cries and tears, prayer, intercession, thanks, praise). The Angel of God over our life. Jehovah speaking above the silent angels, or the peculiar glory of the word of God, especially of the gospel. Jacob’s noble fearlessness, and his holy fear. Bethel, or the sacred places and names upon this earth. Jacob’s vow, the answer to Jehovah’s promise. How the God of Abraham and Isaac becomes also the God of Jacob, or, Jehovah always the same in the kingdom of God: 1. The living results; 2. the living nature of the results.

Section First, Genesis 28:10-15. Starke: Jacob left his home secretly and alone, with all possible speed, before his brother Esau was aware of it. He took nothing with him but his staff (Genesis 32:10). (Josephus: Unfavorable opinion of the people at Luz.)—Jacob, in this wretched condition upon his journey, a symbol of the Messiah. (Explained allegorically by Rambach: 1. Wooing a wife in a strange country; 2. the true heir appearing in poverty; 3. the sojourn at Bethel. Christ had not where to lay his head.)—This ladder, a symbol of God’s paternal care, by which, as by a heavenly ladder, heaven and earth are connected. But that this ladder was to typify something far higher, we learn from Christ himself. The mystery of Christ’s incarnation, and of his mediatorial office, was typified by this. Freiberger Bibel: In this ladder we see the steps and degrees: 1. Of the state of Christ’s humiliation; 2. of the state of his exaltation. Chrysostom: “Faith is the ladder of Jacob reaching from earth to heaven. Bernh.: The ladder of Jacob is the church, as yet partly militant upon the earth, and partly triumphant in heaven. The Lord (Jehovah). Chaldee: The glory of the Lord. Arab.: The right of the Lord. (Freiberger Bibel: Grotius and Clericus are wrong in not being willing to give the name, the Angel of the Lord, to Christ, but to one of the highest angels, to whom they attribute the name of Jehovah, contrary to the sense and usage of the Holy Spirit.)

Genesis 28:15. God, in comforting him, proceeds gradually: 1. He himself is with him, not a mere angel; 2. he will bring him back again; 3. he will never leave him (Romans 8:28). Parents ought not to bring up their children too delicately, for they never know in what circumstances they may be placed. Hall: God is generally nearest to us when we are the most humble. Bibl. Tub.: Even in his sleep Jacob had intercourse with the Lord; in a like manner our sleep should be consecrated to the Lord. Christ, the true Jacob’s ladder (Psalms 91:2; Isaiah 33:2).

Gerlach: That the angels here neither hover nor fly, is owing to the representation and typical significance of the vision. By this very fact Jacob was assured that the place where his head lies, is the point to which God sends his angels, in order to execute his commands concerning him, and to receive communications from him; a symbol of the loving and uninterrupted care for his servants, extending to individuals and minute events. Dreadful. The old church called the Lord’s supper a dreadful mystery (sacramentum tremendum). Lisco: Now Jacob, like Abraham and Isaac, stands as the elect of Jehovah. This is of greater importance, since Jacob is the ancestor of the Israelites only. The promises of Jehovah, therefore, that were given to him, must have appeared as the dearest treasure to his descendants. Schröder: Ver: 10. Because the sun was set. A symbol corresponding with his inward feeling. The paternal home with the revelations and the worship of the only true God, is far behind him, a strange solitude around him, and a position full of temptation before him. The living stone, the rock of salvation, is the antitype of that typical stone in the wilderness; do with it what the patriarch did with his (F. W. Krummacher), Hebrews 1:14. In the symbol of the ladder lies the prediction of the special providence of God. Earth is a court of paradise; life, here below, is a short pilgrimage; our home is above, and the light of a blessed eternity illuminates our path (F. W. Krummacher).

Section Second, Genesis 28:16-22. Starke: Surely the Lord. Chald.: The glory of the Lord.

Genesis 28:17. His feeble nature trembled before this heavenly manifestation, because he was well aware of his unworthiness, and the sublimity of God’s majesty considered in the light of the Spirit. Where God’s word is found, there is a house of God. There heaven stands open. (The ancients believed that the divinity, after having forsaken the greater part of the earth (as to his gracious presence), could be found at that place, whither they would be called after their departure from Chaldæa (Cyrill Alex.)

Genesis 28:18. As Jacob was not induced to set up this stone and worship at it by any superstition or idolatry, so the papists gain nothing in deriving their image-worship from this act; although we read in Leviticus 26:1; Deuteronomy 7:5; Deuteronomy 12:3. that God has expressly prohibited these things. (The Orientals, in their journeys, use oil for food, for anointing, and for healing.)—Cramer: Although the Lord God is everywhere present (Jeremiah 23:24), he is yet especially near to his church with his grace, his spirit, and his blessing (John 14:18; Matthew 18:20). Bibl. Wirt.: Wherever the Lord God shows himself in his word, or by deeds of his grace, there is his house, and the gate of heaven, there heaven with its treasures is open. A Christian walks with great reverence and fear before God, and bows in humble submission before his most sacred majesty. (Christ, the corner-stone, anointed with the oil of gladness.)— Freiberger Bibel: A church, though built of wood and stones, nevertheless bears this beautiful title, and is called God’s house, or house of the Lord. So frequently were named: a. the tabernacle (Exodus 23:19; Exodus 34:26); b. the first and second temple at Jerusalem, etc.

Genesis 28:20-21. Vows must be regarded as holy. The duty of gratitude. Whatever a Christian gives to the establishment of divine service, and to the support of pious teachers, he gives to God. Lisco: How God reveals himself through facts and the experiences of life, by means of which he enlarges the store of our knowledge (still, not here the knowledge of his omnipresence). Gerlach: The vow, which Jacob here took, was based entirely upon the promise given to him, and served as an encouragement to gratitude, to faith, and to obedience, just as afterwards, in the law, in a similar way, sacrifices were vowed and offered. It belonged to the time of childhood under tutors and governors (Galatians 4:1). The stone is to become a place of sacrifice. Calwer Handbuch: Perhaps Jacob accomplished the vow concerning the tithes in a similar sense, as at the feast of tithes and sacrifices (Deuteronomy 14:28-29), which afterwards occurred every three years, and at which the Levites, the stranger, widows, and orphans should be invited, and at which they should eat and be satisfied. This feast may, perhaps, have existed voluntarily, before it became legal and was introduced as a fixed usage. Schröder: Generally, the outward connection with the chosen generation, the residence at a place pointed out to them by God, constituted the condition of a participation in Jehovah. Ishmael, leaving the paternal home and Canaan, immediately passed over to Elohim’s dominion. By this manifestation the fear (?) that he, like Ishmael, might be cut off as a branch from its vine, which soon withereth, is taken away from Jacob, and the blessing spoken over him by Isaac at his departure, receives its sanction (Hengstenberg). (The circumstances were more personal and intense; holy persons constituted sacred places, not vice versâ; nor did the promise lie in Isaac’s individuality, but in the house of Isaac and Rebekah, and Jacob was conscious that he was the heir of blessing. The place of God’s special care, the ideal church of Jehovah now, is also transferred in a certain sense, from Beer-sheba to Haran.)—Here God himself erected a pulpit, and preached, that his church shall stand forever and ever. But Jacob and the angels of heaven are his hearers. But you must not run to St. Jacob, etc., but in faith look at the place where the word and the sacraments are, for there is the house of God, and the gate of heaven (Luther). The oil, which, from without, penetrates objects gently but deeply, symbolizes holiness which is to be imparted to common things and persons as a permanent character (Baumgarten). As God has become ours by faith, so we must cheerfully yield ourselves to our neighbor by love (Berleb. Bibel).