Genesis 28:10

10–22. This section taken from J and E follows upon Gen_27:45. Observe the mention of Haran in Gen_28:10 (cf. Gen_27:43), and the mention of Beer-sheba as the dwelling-place of Isaac in Gen_28:10 (cf. Gen_26:23). Gen_28:10; Gen_28:13-16; Gen_28:19 are probably from J; Gen_28:11-12; Gen_28:17-18; Gen_28:20-22 from E.

This passage, recording Jacob’s dream at Bethel, and the passage in Gen_32:22-32, recording Jacob’s wrestling with the Angel, relate the most famous and significant events in the narrative of the patriarch Jacob. The present passage is in some respects one of the most suggestive and impressive in religious literature. The distinctive features of the narrative have been an inspiration in the poetry and prose of religious literature, e.g. the hymn “Nearer, my God, to Thee.”

The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Gen 28:10 And Jacob went out from Beersheba, and went toward Haran.

Ver. 10. And Jacob went out from Beersheba.] A long journey, but nothing so long as Christ took, from heaven to earth, to serve for a wife, his Church; who yet is more coy than Rachel, and can hardly be spoken with, though he stand clapping and calling, "Open to me, my sister, my spouse." Stupenda dignatio , saith one; a wonderful condescending.

John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Gen_28:10-15

And he dreamed, and behold, a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven

Jacob at Bethel

I.

THE WANDERER. It had been a desolate day, and there was only desolation at night. In his weariness he slept, and as he slept, he dreamed. If dreams reflect the thoughts of the day, a new life must have begun within him. It was not Esau, or the plotting mother, or the aged father, upon whom he looked. The old tent was not over him, nor did he long for the pillows of home. It was a new experience, and the story of his vision has been told all down the centuries for more than three and a half thousand years. What does it mean?

II. THE MEETING-PLACE. It was upon the barren mountainside. Tier on tier of rocks reaching to the mountain-summit were the stairs of natures cathedral. The winds of the mountains roused him not. The audience of that night was asleep. If the beasts came forth from their retreats, they did not disturb him. His own sin had driven him into solitude. Voice of friend or foe, there was none. He was alone; but God was there even when he knew it not. What meetings there have been alone with God I What night-scenes of grandeur and awe! Amid sufferings from sin, in deepest trials and in roughest places, many a soul has exclaimed with the waking Jacob, Surely the Lord is in this place; and I knew it not This is none other but the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.

III. THE VISION AND THE DIVINE COVENANT. Two thoughts are suggested at the outset by this vision: the reaching up of earth to heaven, and the reaching down of heaven to earth.

IV. THE PILLAR OF REMEMBRANCE. Gratitude should be the very first fruit of religion. What less has God reason to expect? What else can man prefer to give? (D. O. Mears, D. D.)

Jacob at Bethel

I. THE DREAMER.

1. A lonely faith.

2. An exile from home.

3. A fugitive from his brother.

II. THE DREAM.

1. The ladder. Heaven not closed to man.

2. Angels of God ascending and descending. Ministry.

3. God at the summit of the ladder.

III. THE IMPRESSION OF HIS DREAM.

1. An overpowering sense of the presence of God.

2. His sin rose before him. (G. R. Leavitt.)

Jacobs vision

I. IT WAS VOUCHSAFED TO HIM IN A TIME OF INWARD AND OUTWARD TROUBLE.

II. IT SATISFIED ALL HIS SPIRITUAL NECESSITIES.

1. It assured him that heaven and earth were not separated by an impassable gulf.

2. It assured him that there was a way of reconciliation between God and man.

3. It assured him that the love of God was above all the darkness of human sin and evil.

4. It imparted to him the blessings of a revelation from God.

III. IT REVEALED THE AWFUL SOLEMNITY OF HUMAN LIFE,

IV. IT RESULTED IN JACOBS CONVERSION,

1. He erected a memorial of the event.

2. He resolved to make God supreme in all his thoughts and actions. (T. H.Leale.)

Jacobs vision

I. CONSIDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES under which the vision was granted.

II. LOOK AT THE NATURE of the vision.

1. The angels are interested in the well-being of Gods people.

2. Heaven is a place of activity.

3. There is a way of communication open between heaven and earth. This way represents the mediation of Christ.

III. LOOK AT THE PROMISES which on this occasion were made to Jacob.

1. God promised to be with Jacob.

2. God promised His protection and guidance to Jacob.

3. God promised him final deliverance from all trouble. (A. D.Davidson.)

Jacobs dream

I. A way set up between earth and heaven, making a visible connection between the ground on which he slept and the sky.

II. The free circulation along that way of great powers and ministering influences.

III. God, the supreme directing and inspiring force, eminent over all. Lessons:

1. Every mans ladder should stand upon the ground. No man can be a Christian by separating himself from his kind.

2. Along every mans ladder should be seen Gods angels.

3. High above all a mans plans and resolves, there must beta living trust in God. (H. W. Beecher.)

The vision at Bethel

I. The vision at Bethel was the first step in Jacobs Divine education--the assurance which raised him to the feelings and dignity of a man. He knew that though he was to be chief of no hunting tribe, there might yet come forth from him a blessing to the whole earth.

II. Jacobs vision came to him in a dream. But that which had been revealed was a permanent reality, a fact to accompany him through all his after-existence. Now the great question we have to ask ourselves is, Was this a fact for Jacob the Mesopotamian shepherd, and is it a phantasm for all ages to come? Or was it a truth which Jacob was to learn just as he was to learn the truth of birth, the truth of marriage, the truth of death, that it might be declared to his seed after him; and that they might be acquainted with it as he was, only in a fuller and deeper sense? If we take the Bible for our guide we must accept the latter conclusion, and not the former. The Son of Man is the ladder between earth and heaven, between the Father above and His children on earth. (F. D. Maurice, M. A.)

What Jacob saw in sleep

Sleeping to see. One may be too wide-awake to see. There are things which are hidden from us until we lie down to sleep. Only then do the heavens open and the angels of God disclose themselves.

I. It does not follow that God is not, because we cannot discern Him. Little do we dream of the veiled wonders and splendours amid which we move. To Jacobs mental fret and confusion, the wilderness where God brooded was a wilderness and nothing more. But in sleep he grew tranquil and still; he lost himself--the flurried, heated, uneasy self that he had brought with him from Beer-sheba; and while he slept the hitherto unperceived Eternal came out softly, largely, above and around him. We learn from this the secret of the Lords nearness.

II. No man is ever completely awake; something in him always sleeps. There is a sense in which it may be said with truth that were we less wakeful, more of God and spiritual realities might be unveiled to us. We are always doing--too much so for finest being; are always striving--too much so for highest attaining. Our religion consists too much in solicitude to get; it is continually The Lord, the Father of mercies, rather than The Lord, the Father of glory. We require to sleep from ourselves before the heavens can open upon us freely and richly flow around us. (S. A. Tipple.)

A ladder between heaven and earth

I. JESUS, THE LADDER, CONNECTS EARTH WITH HEAVEN.

II. THIS LADDER COMES TO SINNERS.

III. GOD IS AT THE TOP, SPEARING KIND WORDS DOWN THE LADDER.

IV. ADVICE TO CLIMBERS:

1. Be sure to get the right ladder; there are plenty of shams.

2. Take firm hold; you will want both hands.

3. Dont look down, or you will be giddy.

4. Dont come down to fetch any one else up. If your friends will not follow you, leave them behind. (T. Champness.)

Intercourse between earth and heaven

I. The ancient heathens told in their fables how the gods had all left the earth one by one; how one lingered in pity, loath to desert the once happy world; how even that one at last departed. Jacobs dream showed something better, truer than this; it showed him God above him, Gods angels all about him.

II. The intercourse between God and man has been enlarged and made perpetual in Jesus Christ, the Incarnate Son.

III. When Jacob awoke he consecrated a pillar, and vowed to build a sanctuary there and give tithes. We cannot altogether commend the spirit in which he made his vow. He tried to make a good bargain with the Almighty; yet God accepted him. The place was holy to him, because he knew that God was there. (R. Winterbotham, M. A.)

The nearness of God to men

I. GOD IS NEAR MEN WHEN THEY LITTLE THINK IT. He is near--

1. When we are not aware of it.

2. When sin is fresh upon us.

3. When we are in urgent need of Him.

II. GOD IS NEAR MEN TO ENGAGE IN THEIR RELIGIOUS TRAINING.

1. God assured Jacob of His abiding presence with him.

2. Jacob was taught to recognize God in all things.

3. He was taught to feel his entire dependence upon God throughout the journey of life.

III. GOD IS ALWAYS NEAR MEN TO EFFECT THEIR COMPLETE SALVATION. Intercourse has been established between earth and heaven; the whole process of mans salvation is under the superintendence of God. (D. Rhys Jenkins.)

Jacobs conversion

I. JACOBS IMPRESSIONS. First time of leaving his fathers home. When night came on, and there was no tent to repose under, and no pillow but a stone on which to lay his weary head, then a feeling of loneliness came over him, then tender thoughts awoke. He felt remorse, tears came unbidden. He felt, I shall never be in my fathers house the boy I was. In all this observe--

1. A solemn conviction stealing over Jacob of what life is, a struggle which each man must make in self-dependence.

2. But beside this conviction of what life is, Jacob was impressed in another way at this time. God made a direct communication to his soul. He lay down to sleep, and he dreamed. We know what dreams are. They are strange combinations of our waking thoughts in fanciful forms, and we may trace in Jacobs previous journey the groundwork of his dream. He looked up all day to heaven as he trudged along, the glorious expanse of an Oriental sky was around him, a quivering trembling mass of blue; but he was alone, and, when the stars came out, melancholy sensations were his, such as youth frequently feels in autumn time. Deep questionings beset him. Time he felt was fleeting. Eternity, what was it? Life, what a mystery! And all this took form in his dream. Thus far all was natural; the supernatural in this dream was the manner in which God impressed it on his heart. Similar dreams we have often had; but the remembrance of them has faded away. Conversion is the impression made by circumstances, and that impression lasting for life; it is God the Spirits work upon the soul.

3. Jacob felt reconciliation with God. There is a distance between man and God. It is seen in the restlessness of men, in the estrangement which they feel from Him. Well, Jacob felt all this. He had sinned, overreached his brother, deceived his father. Self-convicted he walked all day long; the sky as brass; a solemn silence around him; no opening in the heaven; no sign nor voice from God; his own heart shut up by the sense of sin, unable to rise. Then came the dream in which he felt reconciliation with God. Do not mind the form but the substance. It contains three things:

(1) The ladder signifying heaven and earth joined, the gulf bridged over.

(2) The angels signifying the communication which exists between earth and heaven.

(3) The voice which told him of Gods paternal care.

(4) The last impression made on Jacob was that of the awfulness of life.

II. THE RESOLUTIONS WHICH HE MADE.

1. The first of these was a resolution to set up a memorial of the impressions just made upon him. He erected a few stones, and called them Bethel. They were a fixed point to remind him of the past.

2. Jacob determined from this time to take the Lord for his God. He would worship from henceforth not the sun, or the moon, not honour, pleasure, business, but God. With respect to this determination, observe first that it was done with a kind of selfish feeling; there was a sort of stipulation, that if God would be with him to protect and provide for him, that then he would take Him for his God (Gen_28:20-21). And this is too much the way with us; there is mostly a selfishness in our first turning to God. A kind of bargain is struck. If religion makes me happy then I will be religious. God accepted this bargain in Jacobs case; He enriched him with cattle and goods in the land whither he went (Gen_31:18): for godliness has the promise of the life that now is. Disinterested religion comes later on. Observe, secondly, what taking God for our God implies. It is not the mere repetition of so many words; for as our Lord has said, Not every one that saith unto Me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of God. To have God for our God is not to prostrate the knee but the heart in adoration before Him. God is truth: to persist in truth at a loss to ourselves, that is to have God for our God. God is purity: resolve to shut up evil books, turn a countenance of offended purity to the insult of licentious conversation; banish thoughts that conjure up wicked imaginations; then you have God for your God. God is love: you are offended; and the world says, resent; God says, forgive. Can you forgive? Can you love your enemy, or one whose creed is different from your own? That is to have God for your God. (F. W. Robertson, M. A.)

The heavenly pathway and the earthly heart

I. CONSIDER THE VISION AND ITS ACCOMPANYING PROMISE. 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 sleepers 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 fathers God when he left his fathers 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--Gods presence in his wanderings, his protection, Jacobs return to the land, and the promise of Gods persistent presence, working through all paradoxes of providence, and sins of his servant, and incapable of staying its operations, or satisfying Gods heart, or vindicating his faithfulness, at any point short of complete accomplishment of his plighted word. Jacobs 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. It is the secret of purity too. It is also the secret of peace.

II. NOTICE THE IMPERFECT RECEPTION 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 Gods presence as in some special way associated with his fathers 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 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 ease, we see here the effect of the sudden blitzing in upon a heart not yet familiar with the Divine Friend, of the conviction that He is really near. Gracious as Gods promise was, it did not dissipate the creeping awe at His presence. It is an eloquent testimony of mans consciousness of sin, that whensoever a present God becomes a reality to a man, he trembles. This place would not be dreadful, but blessed, if it were not for the sense of discord between God and me. (A. Maclaren, D. D.)

The angel-ladder

I. THE CIRCUMSTANCES IN WHICH THIS REVELATION WAS MADE TO HIM.

1. Jacob was lonely.

2. Jacob was standing on the threshold of independence.

3. Jacob was also in fear.

II. THE ELEMENTS OF WHICH THIS REVELATION CONSISTED.

1. The ladder.

2. The angels.

3. The voice of God. (F. B. Meyer, B. A.)

Bethel: a picture and its lesson

I. THE PICTURE.

1. A solitary man.

2. A guilty man. Sin pierced his hand more than his staff did.

3. An injured man. A child may have more of his mother than her blessing.

4. A fugitive man. He had, like a maltreated animal, the fear of man habitually before his eyes. He cringes one moment, and dodges the next; deprecating the blow he invites, expects, and gets.

5. He is a weary man. There he lies. Now look at him. Mark these--the nameless spot, the shelterless couch, the comfortless pillow, the restless slumber.

II. THE LESSON.

1. In this world wicked success is real failure. No security after sin save in repenting of it.

2. In this world God pays in kind, but blesses sovereignly. That is to say, retribution is often like crime, but grace is a surprise.

3. Turning over a new leaf does not always show a fresh page. It does no good to take up a journey from Beer-sheba to Padan-aram when one means to do the same thing right along. God demands a change in the heart, not in the habit; not so much in the record and show of the life as in the life itself.

4. Sometimes unhappiness is our chief felicity. Jacob has one good, valuable characteristic--he cannot sleep soundly when the angels of covenant grace are coming for him. It was a grand thing for this fugitive that he was restless while the ladder of love was unfolding over him.

5. Retribution is lifted only by redemption. Gods mercy gave Jacob chance of becoming a new man that night. It would have saved him Penuel and a forty years wreck had he accepted it. He might have beckoned an ascending angel to his side, and sent by him a prayer up the ladder; and then an angel descending along the shining rounds would have instantly brought him a message of pardon. Surely any man can show some sign of a penitent heart. We can be sorry we do not sorrow. (C. S. Robinson, D. D.)

A man asleep

I. Jacob is the type ISRAELITE Of his lineage. From this night Jacob becomes the pattern Jew. All that is good or bad in his descendants has its natural beginning in him.

II. Jacob is the type MAN of his race. Far from God. Homesick. What man wants is God.

III. Jacob is the type CHRISTIAN of the Church.

1. He was chosen even before he was born.

2. He is now in the thick of the conflict between nature and grace.

3. He will eventually be saved in the kingdom of heaven. (C. S.Robinson, D. D.)

The ladder of doctrine

I. THE PROPHETIC SIGNIFICANCE OF THE SCENE.

1. It could not have been exclusively personal to Jacob.

3. Furthermore, the vision is not exhausted in any mere engagement of Gods providential care.

3. Hence the vision must be interpreted as belonging to the kingdom of grace.

4. This vision, therefore, is discharged of its full weight of meaning only when we admit it to be a fine, high symbol of Jesus Christ.

II. ITS DOCTRINAL REACH. The plan of redemption comes out in this symbol. Jesus Christ became the medium of grace and restoration. If, now, no mistake has been made in our inquiry thus far, the conclusion we have attained will be fairly corroborated from the disclosures presented of Jesus person and work.

1. Begin with His Person. Surely no more felicitous image could have been presented. Christs double nature is well shown. It would have been only a mockery to Jacob to disclose a ladder coming almost to this earth, yet falling short by a round or two, so as to be just out of reach. Then the angels could not have alighted, and no human foot could have risen. Nor would the case have been anywise better if he had been made to see that his ladder reached nearly to heaven, not quite. For then the angels would have had as great need as he, and an uncrossed gulf would have been beyond them in the air.

2. As to the work of Christ, furthermore, we may remark the same exquisite aptness of this figure in Jacobs vision. Examining it closely, we find that it teaches the sovereign assumption, the perfect completion, the evident display, and the free offer, of the plan of grace. (C. S.Robinson, D. D.)

The ladder of life

I. RECONCILIATION IS NOW OFFERED IN GOOD FAITH TO EVERY INDIVIDUAL OF THE HUMAN RACE.

II. THE NECESSITY OF AN INSTANT AND DETERMINATE DECISION IN OUR DEALING WITH THE OFFERS OF GRACE.

III. HOW ESSENTIAL IT IS FOR EVERY SOUL THUS ADDRESSED BY THE GOSPEL OFFER TO MEASURE ALTERNATIVES.

IV. WHAT FELICITOUS DISPOSAL THIS VISION MAKES OF THE VEXED QUESTION CONCERNING THE CONNECTION BETWEEN FAITH AND WORKS.

V. GROWTH IN GRACE IS ALSO GROWTH IN EXPERIENCE.

VI. RESPONSIBILITY BEGINS THE MOMENT THE FIRST STEP OF DUTY IS DISCLOSED TO AN INTELLIGENT MAN.

VII. PERSONAL ACCEPTANCE OF JESUS CHRIST AS OUR SAVIOUR AND SURETY. (C. S. Robinson, D. D.)

The vision of God

I. ANALYSIS.

1. It is evident that God Himself was the sum and substance, the centre and glory, of that entire vision. The Almighty was disclosed in presence and purpose, in prediction and promise, as standing up over the ladder of grace for a fallen world.

2. See the effect of this discovery upon Jacob.

(1) The first thing it did was to frighten him.

(2) The next effect seems to have been some sort of sense of guilt. He vaguely feels the need of propitiation.

II. LESSONS. The truest way to produce conviction of sin is to make a disclosure of Divine holiness.

2. The uselessness of mere religious emotion without establishment of principle.

3. God really offers a chance of salvation to every man who will enter upon the new life. (C. S. Robinson, D. D.)

A turn in the tide

I. THAT ERRING MEN NEED DIVINE HELP.

II. THAT THIS SPECIAL HELP WAS GRANTED TO JACOB IN VIEW OF THE FUTURE. Lessons:

1. The presence of God comes closer than we often think.

2. The earthly may be in unison with the heavenly.

3. Avoid bargain-making with God. Do not say, I could believe I am saved if only I felt happy! Say, He calls me to come; and as He will in no wise cast me out, I must be accepted by Him. What more dare I ask for? Do not say, If only I had more time, if I were not so pressed with poverty, if I had but some friend to direct me, I would serve God! What I You do not need God because you are moneyless, friendless! What! You would walk with God in a calm, but not when a storm was yelling and dashing! Oh, foolish people and unwise! Away with all reserves! God is for us: Christ is with us. Receive what He proffers. Do as far as you know of His will, and leave all consequences with Him, sure that He will secure everlasting blessings. (D. G. Watt, M. A.)

Jacob at Bethel

I. THE VISION GRANTED TO JACOB.

1. This dream taught Jacob that there is a close connection between this world and the next.

2. It taught him that God rules over all.

3. It taught him the solemnity of life.

II. THE PROMISES MADE TO JACOB.

1. That he should be greatly blessed.

2. That he should be a blessing.

3. That God would watch over him.

III. THE RESOLUTIONS FORMED BY HIM.

1. He resolved to make a memorial of the night vision and the promises.

2. He resolved to accept the Lord as his God.

3. He also resolved to give back to God a tenth. (W. J. Evans.)

Divine providence

I. THERE IS A DIVINE PROVIDENCE.

II. THE DIVINE GOVERNMENT IS VEILED AND SILENT IN ITS OPERATION.

III. THE DIVINE GOVERNMENT IS ACCOMPLISHED BY MANY AGENTS.

IV. THE DIVINE PURPOSE IS ACCOMPLISHED AMID MUCH APPARENT CONFUSION.

V. THE DIVINE GOVERNMENT IS CONTINUED WITHOUT INTERRUPTION OR HINDRANCE.

VI. THE GRAND DESIGN OF THE DIVINE GOVERNMENT IS MORAL AND SAVING. (W. L. Watkinson.)

Bethel

I. THE PILGRIM. The way of transgressors is hard. He is without a guide, friendless, defenceless.

II. THE PILGRIMS VISION. In Me is thy help. Lo, I am with you alway.

III. THE PILGRIMS VOW. (T. S. Dickson.)

I. THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THIS VISION.

1. The close connection between earth and heaven; between things unseen and things seen.

2. The ministry of heaven to earth; the communication between things unseen and things seen.

3. The assurance of Divine love and care.

The dreamer

II. WHAT THIS VISION AND REVELATION OF GOD TAUGHT JACOB.

1. The universal presence of God.

2. The sacredness of common things.

III. WHAT THIS VISION AND REVELATION LED JACOB TO DO.

1. TO set up a memorial of that night.

2. To consecrate himself to God. (A. F. Joscelyne, B. A.)

Bethel; or, the true vision of life

I. IN THE TRUE VISION OF LIFE THERE IS A RECOGNITION OF OUR CONNECTION WITH OTHER WORLDS.

II. IN THE TRUE VISION OF LIFE THERE IS A RECOGNITION OF GODS RELATION TO ALL.

1. As the Sovereign of all.

2. As the Friend of man. Two things show this.

(1) Mans continuation as a sinner in such a world as this.

(2) The special means introduced for his moral restoration.

III. IN THE TRUE VISION OF LIFE THERE IS THE RECOGNITION OF A DIVINE PROVIDENCE OVER INDIVIDUALS.

1. This Biblical doctrine agrees with reason.

2. It agrees with consciousness.

IV. IN THE TRUE VISION OF LIFE THERE IS THE RECOGNITION OF THE SOLEMNITY OF OUR EARTHLY POSITION. How dreadful is this place!

1. Jacobs discovery introduced a new epoch into his history.

2. Jacobs discovery introduced a memorable epoch in his life. (Homilist.)

Mans spiritual capacity

I. THE EXISTENCE OF A SPIRITUAL CAPACITY IN MAN.

1. Jacob saw angels, and God Himself.

2. He heard the voice of the Infinite.

3. He felt emotions which mere animal existence could not experience.

II. THE AWAKENING OF THIS SPIRITUAL CAPACITY IN MAN.

1. It is sometimes unexpected.

2. It is always Divine.

3. It is ever glorious.

4. It is ever memorable. (Homilist.)

Jacobs vision

I. TAKE NOTE OF THE SURROUNDINGS OF THE VISION.

1. The ambitious schemings of Jacob and his mother to supplant his brother Esau.

2. Jacob is an illustration of a man in whose soul faith struggles with ambition.

II. EMPHASIZE THE REVELATION WHICH THE VISION CONTAINS.

1. God as the God of providence.

2. The intimate union of the seen and unseen.

III. NOTICE ITS EFFECT UPON THE MIND OF HIM TO WHOM IT WAS GIVEN.

1. A sense of the universal presence of God.

2. A sense of awe which possesses the sinning soul at the revelation of Gods presence.

3. A sense of penitence at the revelation of Gods goodness. (R. Thomas, M. A.)

Jacobs dream

I. THAT THE MORAL DISTANCE BETWEEN HEAVEN AND EARTH IS GREAT.

1. Heaven is distant from the thoughts of the ungodly.

2. The conceptions of man prove the same thing.

3. The conduct of sinners seems to confirm this statement.

II. THAT THERE IS A SPIRITUAL COMMUNICATION BETWEEN HEAVEN AND EARTH.

1. This confers dignity upon our globe.

2. This imparts honour to man.

3. This communication is of Divine origin.

4. Heavenly communications are not dependent on the outward circumstances of man.

III. THAT THROUGH THIS COMMUNICATION ALONE MAN CAN HAVE A TRUE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD.

1. Because the human and divine are united.

2. Because through it a covenant relationship is formed between us and God.

3. It secures to us the protection of God.

4. It provides for the consummation of our highest conceptions of felicity.

IV. THAT TRUE COMMUNION WITH GOD PRODUCES REVERENTIAL FEAR IN THE HEART. (Homilist.)

The spirit world

I. THIS VISION SUGGESTS THE IDEA OF A SPIRIT WORLD.

1. We think of a spirit--

(1) As a self-modifying agent or being.

(2) As a religious being.

(3) As a reflecting being.

(4) As a self-conscious being.

(5) As a self-complete being.

(6) As a personally responsible being.

2. That a world of such beings exists may be argued from--

(1) The structure of the visible universe.

(2) The concurrent impressions of mankind.

(3) Our own individual consciousness.

(4) The Word of God.

II. THIS VISION SUGGESTS THAT MAN IS CONNECTED WITH THE SPIRIT WORLD.

1. He is a member of it.

2. He is amenable to its laws.

3. He is now forming a character that will determine his position in it.

III. THIS VISION SUGGESTS THAT THERE IS ONE MASTER. (Homilist.)

The solitary one and his visitation

I. THE SITUATION AND CIRCUMSTANCES IN WHICH JACOB WAS PLACED when he received this visitation from heaven.

1. He was solitary.

2. He had a weary body.

3. He had an anxious mind.

4. He was asleep. The Almighty can visit and bless at a time and in a manner which we little expect.

II. THE GRACIOUS VISITATION WHICH JACOB HAD FROM GOD.

1. It was in a dream.

2. It was an encouraging visit.

3. It was a glorious visit.

4. It was a gracious visit.

III. THE EFFECTS PRODUCED ON JACOBS MIND AND THE LINE OF CONDUCT WHICH HE WAS INDUCED TO PURSUE.

1. He was afraid.

2. He set up a pillar.

3. He changed the name of the place.

4. He entered into a solemn covenant with God.

IV. APPLICATION.

1. In our journey through life we may sometimes be solitary, dejected, and perplexed; but we often have gracious visits from the Lord.

2. The vows of God are upon us, viz., those of baptism and good resolution.

3. Do we offer unto God thanksgiving and pay our vows unto the Most High? (Benson Bailey.)

Jacobs vision

I. WHAT JACOB SAW ON THIS OCCASION.

1. A ladder

2. Its position.

3. Its base.

4. The top of it.

5. Above it.

6. Upon it.

II. WHAT JACOB HEARD.

1. Jehovah proclaimed Himself the God of his fathers.

2. Jehovah promised him the possession of the country where he then was.

3. He promised him a numerous progeny; and that of him should come the illustrious Messiah, in whom all the families of the earth should be blessed.

4. He promised him His Divine presence and protection.

III. WHAT JACOB FELT.

1. He felt the influence of the Divine presence.

2. He felt a sacred and solemn fear.

3. He felt himself on the precincts of the heavenly world.

IV. WHAT JACOB DID.

1. He expressed his solemn sense of the Divine presence (Gen_28:16-17).

2. He erected and consecrated a memorial of the events of that eventful night.

3. He vowed obedience to the Lord.

4. He went on his way in peace and safety.

Application:

1. The privileges of piety. Divine manifestations, promises.

2. The duties of piety.

3. The delights of public worship. Gods house is indeed the gate of heaven.

4. How glorious a place is heaven! (J. Burns, D. D.)

The dream of Jacob

I. Here is, first of all, LARGER SPACE. Jacob saw heaven. Enlargement of space has a wonderful influence upon mind and spirit of every degree and quality. Go abroad; climb the hill, and leave your sorrow there. Take in the great revelation of space, and know that Gods government is no local incident or trifle which the human hand can take up and manage and dispose of. We perish in many an intellectual difficulty for want of room. Things are only big because they are near; in themselves they are little if set up with the firmament domed above them, and numbered along with other things, which give proportion to all the elements which make up the circle of their influence. Go into the field, pass over the waves of the seas, pray when the stars are all ablaze like altars that cannot be counted, and at which an infinite universe is offering its evening oblation; take in more space, and many a difficulty which hampers and frets the mind will be thrown off, and manhood will take a bound forwards and upwards. Space is not emptiness: space is a possible Church.

II. Enlarging space never goes alone; it brings with it ENLARGING LIFE. Jacob not only beheld heaven: he saw the angels coming down, going up--stirred by an urgent business. It is one thing to talk about the angels: itis another to see them.

III. Enlarging. space brings enlarging life; enlarging life brings AN ENLARGING ALTAR. Jacob said, Surely the Lord is in this place. We cannot enter into Jacobs meaning of that exclamation. He had been reared in the faith that God was to be worshipped in definite and specified localities. There were places at which Jacob would have been surprised if he had not seen manifestations of God. The point is, at the place where he did not expect anything he saw heaven; he saw some form or revelation of God. See how the greater truth dawns upon his opening mind, Surely the Lord is in this place, and that is the very end of our spiritual education; to find God everywhere; never to open a rose-bud without finding God; never to see the days whitening the eastern sky without seeing the coming of the Kings brightness; so feel that every place is praying ground to renounce the idea of partial and official consecration, and stand in a universe every particle of which is blessed and consecrated by the presence of the infinite Creator.

IV. Immediately following these larger conceptions of things, we find a marvellous and instructive instance of THE ABSORBING POWER OF THE RELIGIOUS IDEA. In Jacobs dream there was but one thought. When we see God all other sights are extinguished. This is the beginning of conversion; this is essential to the reality of a new life. For a time the eye must be filled with a heavenly image; for a time the eye must be filled with a celestial message; a complete forgetfulness of everything past, a new seizure and apprehension of the whole solemn future. (J. Parker, D. D.)

Christ typified by Jacobs ladder

A beautiful emblem of the Saviour. It may typify--

1. The person of the Saviour.

2. The mediatorial work of Christ.

3. Christ as the only way to the Father.

4. The accessibility of Christ to the perishing sinner.

5. The connection of angels with the work and Kingdom of Christ.

6. The heavenly state to which Christ will exalt His people. (J. Burns, D. D.)

Jacob at Bethel

1. The office of sorrow--even of remorse, the sorrow of sin--is to drive us from the visible to the invisible, from earth to heaven, from ourselves to God.

2. There is a ladder between earth and heaven on which angel messengers carry up our prayers to God and bring His answers down. Nay! this is but the hope of our dreams; the reality transcends it; for God is here, and needs neither ladder nor angel to communicate with us or open to us communication with Him: here in our hours of sorest need, of bitterest loneliness, of self-inflicted sorrow, of well-deserved penalty, of more poignant remorse; here as He was in the burning bush to Moses, and in the mysterious visitor to Gideon, and in the still, small voice to Elijah, and in the child wrapped in the swaddling clothes to the stable guests; and still by most of us unseen and to most of us unknown.

3. But when the veil is taken from our faces and we see Him, then the ground becomes consecrated ground, the stable a sacred place, the lowing of the cattle an anthem, Horeb a sanctuary, the land of Midian a holy land, our pile of stones a Bethel.

4. Yea! more than this; not places only but persons are transformed by this vision of the invisible, by this awakening to the truth, Lo, God is here. It here changes Abram, Chaldean worshipper, into Abraham, Friend of God; Jacob, the supplanter, into Israel, Prince of God; Moses, the impetuous murderer of the Egyptian, into the meekest man of sacred history; David, the sensual king, into the sweet singer of spiritual experiences; Jeremiah, the prophet of lamentation, into the hope and courage of Israel; Saul, the persecuting Pharisee, into Paul, the self-sacrificing Apostle; John, the son of thunder, into John the beloved disciple.

5. Finally, the poorest consecration--the gift of ourselves with even Jacobs if--is accepted by God as a beginning. Whosoever cometh unto Him He will in no wise cast out. (Lyman Abbott, D. D.)

Jacob at Bethel

I. THE SEVERITY OF GOD. The pitiable condition of Jacob when he arrived at Bethel illustrates this. A homeless, helpless, despondent wanderer.

II. THE GOODNESS OF GOD.

1. In its suggestive symbol (Gen_28:12).

2. In its encouraging revelation of the Divine presence (Gen_28:13).

3. In its encouraging promises (Gen_28:13-15). Inheritance, guidance, protection, companionship.

III. THE EFFECT UPON JACOB.

1. It awoke him of his sleep.

2. It filled him with an awe-inspiring sense of the Divine presence.

3. It filled him with a spirit of worship.

4. It led him to a reconsecration of himself to God.

Lessons:

1. Self-seeking even leads to failure.

2. God will never leave nor forsake His child.

3. Let us beware of a partial consecration. (D. C. Hughes, M. A.)

The Christ ladder

The great truth, therefore, that ariseth from hence is, that Christ is our Ladder of Life and Love, by which we have communion with God upon earth, while we live, and admission unto God in heaven, when we die. This ladder hath seven excellent properties. It is--

1. A living ladder, therefore it is called a ladder of life; a ladder that hath life in it, both intrinsically and objectively.

2. A loving ladder, that will not, cannot easily let go its hold of any such as sincerely come to it, to climb upon it, and do therein take hold of it, and thereby embrace it.

3. It is a lively ladder also that will so lovingly embrace us, and so livelily both take hold and keep hold of us, and not let us go until He has brought us up to the top of the ladder, and from thence into mansions of glory.

4. It is a lovely ladder.

(1) In its nature.

(2) In its posture.

The posture and end of its erection is for saving from hell, and sending to heaven.

5. The fifth excellent property is, it is a large ladder; there is room enough both for saints and angels upon this ladder. It is so large, that it enlargeth and stretcheth out itself into all lands, as do the great luminaries of heaven. This ladder is--

(1) Extensive, as it is found everywhere, Asia, Africa, or America; whether it be in the city or in the country; whether it be in public, or in private, whether in family worship, or closet retirements; in all those places believers do find this large ladder of love let down to them, and there doth Christ give them his loves (Son_7:11-12). Upon which account the apostle saith, I will that men pray everywhere, etc. (1Ti_2:8), whether in the fields, or in the villages, or in the vineyards, or under the secret places of the stairs (Son_2:14). Any place, yea a chimney corner may make a good Oratory upon this ladder, whereon Christ accounteth our voices sweet, and our countenances comely. And this ladder, Christ.

(2) It is comprehenensive to all persons; there is room enough upon this ladder for all the saints in all the nations of the world.

6. The sixth excellent property--it is a long and lofty ladder, so long as to reach from earth to heaven.

7. The seventh excellent property of this ladder is, it is a lasting, yea, an everlasting ladder. (C. Nose.)

Jacobs dream: the solution of a mystery

I. THE DUALITY OF EXISTENCE. Let us pause for a moment and contemplate our own existence; for each one of us is a little universe, a miniature representation of the great universe of which we form a part, Now, we carry within ourselves a kind of double consciousness. We have a higher nature and a lower nature, a spiritual side and a material side, an immortal element and a mortal element. It is this double consciousness that has suggested to heathen nations the existence of another world. Men of thought and reflection among them have discovered in themselves powers that can never be developed in the present life, desires that can never be satisfied by any material objects, and hence they have speculated and discoursed concerning a higher, a nobler, a more permanent state of existence. But Jacob was not left to grope after this knowledge by the light of his own reason. In this magnificent vision of the night, the truth is made known to him in all its imposing details, is revealed to him with marvellous clearness and emphatic precision. This truth is taught unto you, not by the uncertain voice of your constitution, as it was to ancient sages; not by supernatural visions, as it was to Jacob; but by the explicit and authoritative teaching of Gods word. It was a part of Christs mission, when He assumed our nature, to teach us this truth; for He brought life and immortality to light through the Gospel. He came to elevate us, by setting us free from the tyranny of sense, and directing our thoughts to things invisible. Labour not for the meat which perisheth, but for the meat which endureth unto everlasting life, which the Son of Man shall give unto you.

II. THE UNITY OF EXISTENCE. We know that we possess both a material and a spiritual nature, but the point at which they come in contact it is impossible to ascertain. You have a definite reply in the text. Heaven above and earth below are connected by one great ladder. They are, therefore, not two, but one. And, behold, the Lord stood above it. The Lord of heaven is also the Lord of earth; heaven End earth are therefore united into one realm. The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland contains different countries; all separate, yet all united; owing allegiance to the same sovereign. The universe is a vast united kingdom, embracing different provinces, different principalities, different powers; but all alike subject to the central government. And, behold, the angels of God ascending and descending on it. The spirit-world is very near to us, we are but one step removed from it, were our eyes opened we should perceive that it stands round about us. Indeed, we are sometimes inclined to believe that material forms are but symbolical representations of spiritual realities, that the things which are seen are but outward manifestations of the things which are not seen. Through its agony and atoning death, the way which sin had shut up has been reopened. God can have mercy upon us, can hold communion with us, can send His angels down to comfort us in our troubles, to strengthen us in our conflicts, and at last to bear our ransomed souls to glory. The unity of existence! It is a wonderful, and yet a solemn fact. All being is but one vast territory, broken up into innumerable separate parts, but all united under one sceptre. Dream not, then, that when you quit this world, you will become the subject of a different government, or become amenable to different laws. (D. Rowlands, B. A.)

A ladder of escape

A company of shipwrecked sailors cast on the coast of Scotland at the bottom of a great precipice, where the water would have broken up their vessel and drowned them, found a ladder hanging down the precipice, which they reached from their ships mast, and escaped thereby. So Christ is to us a ladder of salvation, and if we believe on Him we shall be saved from all evil, and we may rise to be holy, happy, and useful. (D. Rowlands, B. A.)

The God of Bethel

I. CONSIDER WHAT JACOB SAW.

II. CONSIDER WHAT HE HEARD.

1. I am the Lord God of Abraham thy father, and the God of Isaac. It is well to have a known God, a tried God, a family God, and a fathers God; it is well to be able to say, as the Church does in the twenty-second Psalm, Our fathers trusted in Thee: they trusted, and Thou didst deliver them. It is well for you, when God looks down and sees you walking in the same path that your fathers did who are gone to heaven before you, followers of those who through faith and patience are now inheriting the promises.

2. The land whereon thou liest, to thee will I give it, and to thy seed. God had already given it by promise to Abraham, but at present he had no inheritance, not so much as to set his foot on. But as God had given it to him and his seed by promise, it was as sure as if in actual possession. Yet several hundred years were previously to elapse, and they must suffer much in Egypt, and must wander forty years in the wilderness. But what of this?

It was the land of promise; God had given them it, and nothing could hinder their possession of it.

3. 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 so it was. You know in a few years they became an innumerable people, and what millions since have descended from this one patriarch.

4. And in thee and in thy seed shall all the families of the earth be blessed. This refers to the Messiah. To them as concerning the flesh He came, God having raised up His Son, even Jesus, who delivered us from the wrath to come. In His name we are blessed with all spiritual blessings. This promise has as yet received only a partial accomplishment. Few as yet are blessed with faithful Abraham. But we read of a nation being born in a day; that all nations of the earth shall be blessed in Him; that all shall know the Lord from the least even to the greatest.

5. And, behold, I am with thee. So He is with all His people. His essential presence fills heaven and earth.

6. And will bring thee again into this land. This would be gladsome tidings to Jacob, for who is he that could not rejoice at such tidings concerning a country where he was born and bred, the residence of his most impressive years?

7. For I will not leave thee until I have done that which I have spoken to thee of. But would He leave him then? Oh no; his anxieties therefore were entirely unnecessary. Thus it is with Christians: they have exceeding great and precious promises, All yea and amen in Christ Jesus, and all of them must be fulfilled before God leaves His people. Will He leave you then? No, He will never leave you, nor forsake you, to all eternity. As your day is, so shall your strength be while here; hereafter all tears shall be wiped from your eyes.

III. OBSERVE WHAT HE DID.

1. He discovered and acknowledged what he was ignorant of before he went to sleep.

2. He confessed a privilege.

3. He reared a memorial.

4. He vowed a vow. (W. Jay.)

The vision

I. THE SITUATION OF JACOB AT THIS PRESENT TIME.

1. And, that we may understand this more accurately, let us notice his character. According to the chronology of sacred Scripture, Jacob was now more than seventy years of age; so that his character was not then to be formed. He had lived sufficiently long to develop all its reigning tendencies; and though some might be disposed to conclude, from the impropriety of his conduct on this occasion, that he was yet a stranger to God, and to the renewing influence of Divine grace, yet an accurate knowledge of human nature, and an extensive acquaintance with the errors of men of sincere piety, would hardly sanction so harsh a conclusion.

2. His affliction. A short time previously Jacob had no enemy. Behind him were the terrors of murderous revenge, and before him the uninteresting waste of an untried world. To this must be added the sorrows of separation from all that he had learned to love. These things could not but press upon him as he went out from Beer-sheba to Haran; and the distress of his heart would be in a still greater degree aggravated by the consciousness of guilt. He had defrauded his brother--he had deceived his father--he had lied unto God. The peace of conscience which he once enjoyed must have been disturbed. He could not look up with cheerful confidence towards the God of truth. Sin against God has ever had the same character and effects. It drove the angels out of heaven, and our first parents out of paradise.

3. His submission. Not a word of murmuring appears on the record--nothing of the spirit of resistance--no high rebellious contending against the providence of God; but silently he obeys the injunctions of parental authority; and with nothing but his staff, he steals unobtrusively from under his fathers roof, and enters alone upon the pilgrimage, which his misconduct had rendered necessary. There would be, however, some comfort even in the spirit of pious submission.

4. His afflicted mind would, in the midst of trial, be in some measure cheered by the expectation which he had been warranted to encourage. He was yet, as a matter of grace, encouraged to look upon himself as one whom the Lord had blessed; and it appears, that in the sorrowful hour of his departure from home, his father, fearing lest, in his exile, he should be swallowed up of overmuch sorrow, gave him even additional encouragement. He confirmed the blessing to him in language still more distinct God Almighty bless thee, and give thee the blessing of Abraham, to thee, and to thy seed with thee. We see, then, Jacob fallen and afflicted, but submissive, penitent, and borne up by hope in the promise of God, taking his journey through the wilderness, till the shadows of evening lengthen round him--till the setting sun finds him in a solitary spot, remote from the dwellings of man; where the turf must be his bed-the circle of heaven his canopy--and one of the stones of the place his pillow; and where, if he finds comfort, it must be from a source beyond the range of human calculation. We must not attach to such a scene, in a warm climate, all the desolateness of a houseless wanderer among ourselves; but still, such a combination of circumstances wears the strong character of chastening; and we may write upon it that interesting passage of Holy Writ. Whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom He receiveth. Jacob strove to hasten an event which he should have looked for in the regular course of Gods providence--the result is that he delays it. He aimed at the pre-eminence in his fathers house, and, in a few hours he is resting his houseless head upon a stony pillow in the wilderness. Such dispensations are highly calculated for the advancement of the spiritual character. God only can make the storm a fertilizing, rather than a desolating shower.

II. But we come to consider THE CONSOLATION WHICH WAS MERCIFULLY VOUCHSAFED TO JACOB IN HIS SOLITUDE. In the failure of all sources of earthly comfort, God generally appears most especially, for the support of those who trust in Him.

1. The obscure intimation of a gracious reconciliation with God through a mediator.

2. The second lesson inculcated in this vision was the providential protection of God. It was shown to him, that He who through a sufficient mediation was a reconciled God, would also be a father, a protector, a guide. It is scarcely possible to conceive a more kind and encouraging address, to one in the circumstances of Jacob. It is calculated to give a very exalted idea of the mercy of God, who not only blesses beyond what we ask or think; but even when we think not, meets his erring and disconsolate children with the assurances of a love that cannot be averted, and a fatherly protection that will never fail. How blessed are they who have the Lord for their God! In the midst of outward affliction and inward trial, Jacob was crowned with blessings that empire could not command, and that wealth could not buy. Let not then the pilgrim of the cross be discouraged. A rich provision is made for you--a throne of grace is open to you; a willing helper only waits, and scarcely waits, for the petition of faith, that he may give you aid. How deeply is their lot to be regretted who have never sought the Redeemer, the guardian, the guide, the comforter of Jacob!--how much is the mere man of this present world to be pitied! (E. Craig.)

Life as a ladder

It was a good while ago that a young man, sleeping one night in the open air, had a wonderful vision of a ladder that reached up all the way into heaven. Whatever else it meant, it was at least a vision of what his life might be, of what every life may be, of what every true and noble life must be. Its foot rested on the earth; and we must all start very low down. He who would ascend a ladder, puts his foot first on the lowest round. We cannot start in life at the top, but must begin at the bottom and climb up. We cannot begin as angels, nor as holy saints, nor even as moderately advanced Christians. We must begin in the most rudimentary way, with the simplest duties, just as the wisest men once sat with primer and spelling-book in hand. But this ladder was not lying all along on the earth; its foot was on the ground, but its top was up above the stars, amid the glory of Gods presence. A true life rises heavenward. It is a poor, an unworthy, life-plan that is all on the earth, that lifts no eye or thought upward, that does not take heaven into its purpose. The true life must press upward until it reaches glory. Its aim is the perfection of character. Its constant aspirations are for holiness and righteousness--Christlikeness. Its goal is heaven itself. A ladder is climbed step by step; no one leaps to the top. And no one rises to sainthood at a bound. No one gets the victory once for all over his sins and faults. It is a struggle of long years; and every day must have its own victories, if we are ever to be crowned. It may give some people considerable comfort to think of lifes course as a ladder, which one must climb slowly, step by step. A ladder is not easy to ascend. It is toilsome work to go up its rounds. It is not easy to rise Christward; it is hard, costly, painful. Railroad tracks suggest speed, but a ladder suggests slow progress. We rise upward in spiritual life, not at railway speed, nor even at the racers rate of progress, but as men go up a ladder. Then there is another side to this truth. Men do not fly up ladders; yet they go up step by step. We ought always to be making at least some progress in Christian life, as the years go on. Each day should show some slight advance in holiness, some new conquest over the evil that is in us, some besetting sin or wrong habit gotten a little more under our feet. Every fault we overcome lifts us a little higher. Every low desire, every bad habit, all longings for ignoble things, that we trample down, become ladder-rounds on which we climb upward out of grovelling and sinfulness into nobler being. There really is no other way by which we can rise upward. If we are not living victoriously these little common days, we are not making any progress. Only those who climb are getting toward the stars. Heaven is for those who overcome. Not that the struggle is to be made in our own strength, or that the victories are to be won by our own hands; there is a mighty Helper with us always on the ladder. He does not carry us up, always we must do the climbing; but He helps and cheers, putting ever new strength into the heart, and so aiding every one who truly strives in His name to do his best. The ladder did not come to an end half-way up to heaven; it reached to the very steps of Gods throne. A true life is persistent and persevering, and ends not short of glory. It is ladder, too, all the way; it does not become a plain, easy, flower lined path after a time. A really earnest and faithful Christian life never gets easy. The easy way does not lead upward; it leads always downward. Nothing worth living for can be had without pain and cost and struggle. Every step up the way to heaven is up-hill, and steep besides. Heaven always keeps above us, no matter how far we climb up toward it. However long we have been climbing, and whatever height we have reached, there are always other victories to win, other heights to gain. We shall never get to the top of the ladder until our feet are on heavens threshold. This wonderful vision-ladder was radiant with angels. We are not alone in our toilsome climbing. We have the companionship and ministry of strong friends we have never seen. Besides, the going up and coming down of these celestial messengers told of communication never interrupted between God and those who are climbing up the ladder. There is never a moment, nor any experience, in the life of a true Christian, from which a message may not instantly be sent up to God, and back to which help may not instantly come. God is not off in heaven merely, at the top of the long, steep life-ladder, looking down upon us as we struggle upward in pain and tears. As we listen, we hear Him speak to the sad, weary man who lies there at the foot of the stairway, and He says: Behold, I am with thee, and will keep thee in all places whither thou goest; I will not leave thee. Not angel championship alone, precious as it is, is promised, but Divine companionship also, every step of the toilsome way, until we get home. It is never impossible, therefore, for any one to mount the ladder to the very summit; with Gods strong, loving help the weakest need never faint nor fail. (J. M. Miller, D. D.)

Jacob at Bethel

I. JACOBS DREAM.

1. When he dreamed it.

2. What the dream was.

3. What it meant.

II. JACOBS WAKING THOUGHTS.

1. Humble surprise.

2. Reverential awe.

3. A joyful discovery.

III. JACOBS VOW.

1. The preparation.

2. The vow itself. Jacob dedicates

(1) himself,

(2) his substance, to God. (J. Hambleton, M. A.)

Right principles

There comes a time when every young man or maiden must start out upon life. The seed that ripens upon the stalk must be shaken off, and be planted, and grown upon its own root. The scion is cut away from the parent branch and grafted upon another stalk. It is at the starting out in life that every one needs an inspiration, and will have it, either good or bad. It is just at this point that every one needs, in some way suited to his genius, his circumstances and condition, that there should happen to him substantially that which happened to Jacob; that in his vision (which may be upon his bed, or may be one of those waking visions which men have) there should be a ladder, which, touching the earth, connects it with heaven; and a vision of Gods angels passing between the Father and His earthly child. Let me, then, not so much preach as talk with you of your visions; and I address myself mainly to the young--to those that are just entering upon life. Shall your ladder, standing on the earth, reach to heaven? or is your ladder, in its whole length, flat along the ground? Stop one moment, and think, you who have started out, or are about starting. By ladder I mean your plans in life. Are they, all of them, lying upon the ground, or, though they begin there, do they really go up, and consciously take hold of the future and of the spiritual? Man must not avoid the world. Every ladder should stand upon the ground. The ground is a very good place to start from, but a very poor place to stop on. No man can be a Christian by separating himself from his kind. No man can be a Christian by avoiding business; and if you transact business, it must be transacted in the accustomed ways. Activity in earthly things is not inconsistent with true piety. A right industry, a right enterprise, and right ambitions in these, do not stand in the way of true religion. They not only perfectly harmonize with it, but they are indispensable to it. I can scarcely conceive of a lazy man being a Christian. Even the chronicles of those that have sought by retiring to caves, and thus separating themselves from human life, to live a Christian life, show that while they escaped from men, they did not escape from the temptations which sprang up through the passions of human nature. A human life, in its ordinary condition in Christian communities, is favourable (if one be wise enough to employ it) to the production of morality, of virtue, and of true piety. A mans ladder, then, should stand on the ground. A man that is going to be a Christian should be a man among men--joined in interest with them, sympathising in their pursuits, active in daily duties; not above the enterprise, the thoughtfulness, and the proper amount of care that belong to the worldly avocations. This is a part of the Divine economy; and those that have the romantic notion of piety, that it is something that lifts them out of the way of and away from actual worldly cares, misconceive totally the methods of Divine grace. But while mans plans in this world should be secular, and adapted to the great laws of that physical condition in which he was born, they must not end where they begin. Woe be to him that uses the earth for the earth, or whose plans are wholly material, beginning and ending in secularity and materiality; who means by fortune--riches, and nothing else; who means by power--carnal, temporal power, and nothing else; whose pleasure consists in that which addresses itself to the senses, and in nothing else. Woe be to him who lays out a plan which has nothing in it but this world. At the very time when you plant your ladder on the ground, you must see to it that it is long enough to reach, and that it does reach, and rests its top in heaven. This world and the other must be consciously connected in every true mans life. This world is shallow. Our atmosphere is smotheringly near to us. There is no manhood possible that does not recognize an existence beyond our horizon, and that does not stretch itself up into the proportions, at least ideal, which belong to it as a creature of the Infinite. And even if one were to look only upon natural results and economic courses, he is best prepared for this life who considers this life to be made up of this life and of that which is to come. In every outstarting in life it is not enough that you propose to yourself to do well in this world--your this world must reach to the other, Along every mans ladder should be seen Gods good angels. You are not at liberty to execute a good plan with bad instruments. When you lay the course of your life out before you, and say to yourself that you propose to achieve in your mortal life such and such things, it is not a matter of indifference to you how you achieve them. Gods angels must ascend and descend on your ladder, otherwise other and worse angels will. When youth first opens, if it has been Christianity instructed, I think the impulses generally are noble, and even romantic. Youth characteristically aspires to do things that are right, and to do them in a right manner. One of the earliest experiences is that of surprise and even horror at the worlds ignoble ways, and the temporary withdrawal of the young soul from its first contacts with life. Its first comprehension of actual life, and of what must be done in the world, if one would succeed, violates its romantic notion of manly truthfulness, of straightforwardness, of honourable dealings. Almost all young men come up to that period of life at which they are to break away from home, and go out into the world, with the most generous purposes. They seem inspired by truth, honesty, fidelity, enterprise, generosity, honour and even heroism. These all belong to youthful aspirations. They mean never to forsake these things. They mean to carry these qualities into their lives, and to live by them. Now these are Gods good angels to you; not that there are none better; but it may be well said that these nobler incitements, and motives, and aspirations stand along the line of a young mans plans in life as so many angelic messengers by which he purposes to work out his ideal in life. Let every one who begins life, then, have a plan along which are clearly seen noble sentiments and convictions. No plan is fit for achievement which you cannot achieve by open, honest, clean, upright Christian motives. You cannot afford to succeed by any other course. Your ladder, though standing on the ground, should rest its top in heaven; and there should be angels constantly passing between the top and the bottom. It is bad enough to have a plan that begins on earth and stays on earth; but for a man having a good plan to consent to execute it from base sentiments or by base influences, is unpardonable. Your life will task and prove you. Do not, however, let it drive away from you those influences which overhang your childhood. Have they not already gone from some of you? Has not an enamel already formed over some of your tender feelings? Have not some of you boasted of forgetfulness? Have you not boasted that you no longer remembered or were influenced by those tender impulses? and that you have strengthened yourself against them? that you have devastated, to some extent, purity, delicacy, refinement, truth, honour, justice, and rectitude? Are you not already working down toward the animal conditions of life? Do not, however, trust alone to those generous sentiments. Morality is not piety. In the vision of Jacob there was not alone the ladder between the earth and heaven, and the angels ascending and descending, but brightest, and best, and grandest, and behind all the angels, stood God, saying to him, I am thy fathers God. Now high above all a mans plans, high above all his heroic moral resolves, there is to be a living trust in God; and there is to be a soul-connection between ourselves or our business, and our God. All our life long we must not be far from Him. Piety must quicken morality; then life will be safe, and will be successful. Here, then, is a general schedule of a right life; something to do that is right; a plan by which you shall execute a right life by right instruments; and over all, the benign, genial, stimulating influence of the heavenly Father. Business, morality, piety--these three should be coupled together. They are the trinity of influences from which every one should act, and it is transcendently important that young men should find this out before they find out anything else. Blessed be that man who, going from his fathers house, and lying down to sleep, though it be upon the ground, and though the stones be under his head, sees a ladder between heaven and earth, typifying his future life, and on that ladder angels ascending and descending, and hears God saying to him, I am thy God. That is an inspiration on lifes threshold, worth any mans aspirations. (H. W.Beecher)

The comfortable vision

Four points present themselves for consideration in the spiritual meaning of this vision.

I. The perfect Manhood of our Lord Jesus Christ. The ladder was set up on the earth.

II. The eternal Godhead of our Lord Jesus Christ. The top of it reached to heaven.

III. The mediatorial character of our Lord Jesus Christ, resulting from this union of two natures in one Person. He is here represented as a ladder between earth and heaven.

IV. The communications carried on through the Mediator between earth and heaven. The angels of God were seen ascending and descending on the ladder. Prayer, grace, mercy, peace, praise--these are the messages, with which the several angels are charged respectively. (Dean Goulburn)

.

Jacobs ladder

I. The appearance is a ladder; and, now, the dullest of comprehension must at once feel that one mournful truth is here taught. We are plainly reminded of this emblem that the natural normal communication between God and man has been destroyed; and that, by the fall, this planet has been placed in a state of isolation and non-intercourse with heaven.

II. Having considered the first truth taught by this vision, let us now pass to the second, let us examine the medium which God provides to renew this intercourse, to re-establish this alliance between earth and heaven. We have spoken of a disruption, of a chasm such as no thunder ever rifted, and over this abyss angel thoughts must have often hovered in grief and dismay. And, now, can this breach never be healed? is this yawning gulf for ever impassable? Can no skill construct, no virtue, no prayers, win a path of return for a single soul? Must all hope for man be for ever buried in despair? To these questions human reason could not have given but one answer. Human reason, did I say? Cherub and seraph must have shuddered as they gazed at the rent sin had made; and, recalling a frightful tragedy among the celestial hierarchies, they must have felt that for man all was lost--not in danger of being lest--but lost, the soul lost, heaven lost, hope lost, all lost, and lost for ever. But blessed be God, hosannah to His grace; everlasting praises to Him who came to seek and to save that which was lost, these questions have been answered, and so answered that angels are lost in pondering such mercy. Eternal wisdom and power and love have solved the problem, and solved it by consecrating for us a new and living way. In the first place, observe that God, not man, is the architect of this ladder. Jacob did nothing--could do nothing--towards its construction. And so, if we have boldness to enter into the holiest, it is not by works of righteousness which we have done, but by the blood of Jesus. Mark, in the next place, the form and position of this ladder; its foot is planted on the earth, and its top reaches to heaven. A third truth taught by this remarkable vision is the freeness of salvation by Jesus. What conditions are here interposed? What fitness? What works? Between God and man there is one mediator, Jesus Christ; but between that mediator and man there is, there can be none.

III. We have thus seen that the ladder on which Jacob gazed was a type of Christ, of the mysterious interference by which heaven and earth are reconciled. It is not, however, only in this district of Gods moral dominion that so wonderful an interposition is the subject of intense and adoring interest. On this ladder the patriarch saw an order of beings far superior to man. From top to bottom it swarmed with radiant cherubim and seraphim, the angels of God ascending and descending. Ascending and descending; exulting that this new avenue has been opened; and, at once, in eager bands, pouring down to earth as ministering spirits to minister to them who are heirs of salvation. Descending; coming down to encamp about the righteous, whether they sleep or wake, and deliver them--as it is written, He shall give His angels charge over thee to keep thee in all thy ways; they shall bear thee up in their hands lest thou dash thy foot against a stone. And ascending; now to bear the news of a sinners repentance and send a tide of rapture and gratulation along the habitations of heaven; and now to escort the soul of some Lazarus--to guard it from the prince of the power of the air, who watches like a wolf scared from his prey--to guide it on its course, some as strong-winged avant couriers, and some as convoys wafting it up to realms of peace and purity and love, to the bosom of its God. (R. Fuller.)

The vision in the wilderness

I. THE WEARY WANDERER.

1. Homeless.

2. Regretful.

3. Apprehensive.

4. Disappointed.

II. THE WONDROUS VISION.

III. THE WILLING VOW. Rather a response to God than a bargain with Him. Lessons: Note how Jacob, in this journey, may represent three stages in spiritual experience.

1. The penitent; feeling the burden of sin.

2. The believer; rejoicing, with trembling, in Gods revelation of mercy.

3. The worshipper; consecrating his whole life to the service of his God and Saviour. (W. S. Smith, B. D.)

Jacobs night at Bethel

This sacred story of Jacobs night at Bethel may serve to teach us that in our darkest and most desolate moments God may be using our trouble and despondency as a means of drawing our hearts to Him. We may find Him nearest when we thought Him farthest off. What the world would call the greatest misfortune may be found to have been sent in the greatest mercy. There is no such word as chance or accident in the inspired vocabulary of faith. Nobody but a sceptic or a misanthrope would say of himself I am as a weed, Flung from the rock on oceans foam to sail Whereer the surge may sweep, the tempests breath prevail. All places are safe, all losses are profitable, all things work together for good to them that love God. Every experience of the unsatisfactory nature of earthly things should direct us to the stronghold of hope. Every pang caused by an uneasy conscience should awaken within us a more intense longing for the peace which passeth all understanding. Out in mid-ocean there is a ship tossing on the waves. The night is dark, the winds are high. The angry elements rage and howl as if determined to tear the shattered vessel in pieces or sink it in the deep. A sailor-boy has just climbed down from the swinging mast and crept into his narrow locker, wet and cold, to get a little rest. He sleeps unconscious of the howl of the storm and the roll of the groaning ship. His heart is far away in that quiet home which he left for a roving life on the seas. He hears again the voice of evening prayer offered from the parental lips, and one fervent, tender petition bears his own name to the throne of the infinite mercy. The Sabbath bell calls, and he goes in the light of memory, with his youthful companions, along the green walks and beneath the shade of ancient trees to the village church. He hears the blessed words of Christ, Come unto Me. God is speaking to that wanderer upon the seas as He spoke to Jacob at Bethel in the dreams of the night. And that vision of home and voice of prayer is sent to that sailor-boy to make the tossing ship to him the house of God and gate of heaven. When he wakes from that brief and troubled sleep, he has only to answer the call of Heaven, as Jacob did, with the gift of his heart, and that night of tossing on the lonely seas shall be to him also the beginning of a new and a better life. Far away, among the mountains of Nevada, where of old Gods creative hand locked up veins of gold in the fissures of the rock, the weary miner lies down in his cheerless cabin to sleep. It is the evening of the blessed Sabbath, and yet to him it has not been a day of rest. Work, work, work, with hammer and spade and drill, from morn to eve, through all the week, has been his life for months and years. His calloused hands, and stiffened frame, and weary step, tell of hardships such as few can bear and live. And he has borne them all--with heat and cold, and rain and drought, and famine and fever--that he might fill his hands with gold. And now, in this wakeful and lonely hour, something impels him to ask himself what all the treasures of the mountains would be worth to him if he had not found rest for his soul. To that tired, Sabbathless worker in his solitude comes a gentle influence, as if it were an angels whisper, to tell him of riches that never perish, and of a home where the weary are at rest. Thus, all round the earth--on the sea and the land, in the city and the wilderness, by night and by day--God is calling wanderers home. (D. March, D. D.)

The angels of God ascending and descending on it

Ascending and descending angels

I. The first white-winged angel whom I ask you to look in the face is ADVANCEMENT. From our earliest to our latest years personal advancement is a keen and noble satisfaction. It is the antagonism which we have to overcome which makes our effort interesting and meritorious. When we strive to go up, the force of gravitation pulls us back. The inertia of our own bodies must be overcome; the lungs, heart, and brain must be subjected to a greater pressure. And it is just so in our moral life. Therefore the saint says, It was good for me that I was afflicted. Therefore we teach that discontent is a good thin, g, that languorous situations are to be avoided, and that a repletion of any sort is dangerous to the soul. Just as soon as a man feels that there is no need for further effort, his angel descends. Perhaps one reason why the angels of little children always behold the face of their Father who is in heaven is because children grow so fast and hunger so after knowledge, and ask questions so far-reaching that they puzzle their too often motionless elders. Biology teaches that, in the life below our own, the life of the animals, when some function which has been long and sorely striven for, perhaps through countless generations, gets fixed in the order of life, its action becomes automatic, and is no longer a factor in the mental outreaching of the individual. It is so also with man. You may be advanced beyond your neighbours in generosity of belief, in the strictness of your veracity, in the extent of your benevolence; but if you are simply carrying out the spiritual functions which your ancestors organized in you by toil and tears, if your faith, truthfulness, charity, cost you no effort, no upward strain, it is not accounted to you for righteousness. And then we learn from science that everything which can become merely mechanical has its day and ceases to be. Only that which is subject to perpetual change can survive.

II. The next angel is MORALITY. Even morality in us is not always ascending. It proceeds or recedes. How many times in the worlds history all rights have been determined and all moralities squared! To-day nothing is more alarming to most people than the notion that right has been a variable thing with the growing ages. Conscience is the voice of God in the soul of man; but how has that soul of man echoed and contorted the voice! The sense of the right is growing, as it long has grown in the race. Except it is growing in you, as an individual, so that you feel its birth-pangs, and struggle with them, it is not an ascending angel for you. Morality is an angel anywhere--in African jungles, where it keeps a man from killing the members of his household unless they are old or sick, and in the best neighbour you can call to mind, who is too honourable to take an unfair advantage of another. Cicero was moral; and we are told that Brutus was an houourable man. But the stride which morality took from these Roman heroes to Abraham Lincoln is a very marked one, known and read of all men. Thirty years since it was immoral in America not to respect the physical rights of white men. To-day it is immoral not to maintain the rights of men, whatever their colour. After a little it will be accounted simply moral to give woman her rights, the custody of her own child, the control of her own earnings and clothes, the right to express an opinion as to how much she shall be taxed, how much of her property the public may appropriate, the right to as much civil consideration as the ignorant Irishman receives who cracks stone on the road. Some time we shall so enlarge the boundaries of morality that men will be forbidden to enslave the minds of their fellows, that they may appropriate their property through the larceny of their brains. Some time it will be thought as dastardly a deed to slowly unnerve and stamp out men by whiskey as it was to poison them with wines, perfumes, roses, and fans in the soft days of luxurious Rome. Some time a man who simply does so much right as custom exacts, who clamours for the letter, as Shylock for the word of the bond, shall be a byword and a hissing; for the only claim you can lay upon the future springs from your individual advance upon the sense of morality you have inherited.

III. The third angel is INSPIRATION. Of what avail is the evolution of our life below, and the growth of conduct into better and best, if the Holy Spirit does not occasionally hold us as the pledge of eternal possession? For, of course, by inspiration here I mean the filling of your soul and mine with the sweetest assurance. The inspiration which made our sacred volume, which long since scented and winged a poet soul in Persia, so that its orisons flew to our day and clime, which made great India like a sandal-wood chest out of which come to-day poems and teachings, fragrantly preserved, is only as a faded nosegay which your aged mother shows as a souvenir of her young days, only as a pathetic glove which a century since eased a young hand which soon was dust. But to you there may come an exhilaration before which clover-scented mornings are but a passing dream. The descending angel of inspiration is going down now to trouble the waters of ancient Siloam, hovering with a ghosts dead hands over interpretations of Scripture long since palsied through disuse, raising again the widows son by the gate of Nain. The ascending angel is wreathing with an electric flush the human pillar of integrity; it is steadying mans moral nerve to translate correctly all that observers see in nature and life; it is lifting from the dead past capacities which have lapsed in us, in our forward march, and restoring to man an equable health of body and soul, a confidence in an all-round Providence, which will make us patient and calm, and a power of knowing much which is unseen, as animals know, and even inanimate life, but which is as dropped stitches in our life. The angel of inspiration bids us look up, and calls, Come; but, in looking and going upward, we lift the world with us. Believe that inspiration is ahead of you and within. It is a messenger of God. It is the crown of effort and of purity. It does not descend with family heirlooms, mental or moral. It is the gift of God to the individual. There are many angels besides those I have named. Belief is one, if it is allied to inspiration; but let these three lead you--Advancement, Morality, Inspiration. They can open to you abiding joys of which my word is but a feeble hint:--

Around your lifetime golden ladders rise;

And up and down the skies,

With winged sandals shod,

The angels come and go, the messengers of God.

(A. S.Nickerson.)

Angelic ministries

I. The most obvious truth herein conveyed s, of course, the constant presence and activity of the inhabitants of heaven; and indeed it is the general tenor of Scripture that God acts upon us men by and through the angelic host. The providence of God, says Bishop Bull, in the government of this lower world, is in a great part administered by the holy angels. These, as Philo terms them, are the ears and eyes of the Universal King. The expression alludes to the government of earthly monarchs, who have their deputies in all parts of their dominion, who are, as it were, the eyes by which they see and the hands by which they act. Now, if we learn to believe in the principle that God deals with us through the ministrations of angels, we shall have to believe also that we ourselves are in these days the subject of these ministrations, although we behold them not. It is not empty space between earth and heaven; the pathways of the air are filled like the roads and avenues of this world. The chariots of God are twenty thousand, even thousands of angels. Bound upon unnumbered missions, they hurry to and fro, those swift and shining forms; now to superintend a kingdoms welfare, now to hold up a monarchs steps; now to guard the head of some mighty chief in the shock of battle, now to wait beside the sick bed of some houseless poor one, to suggest thoughts of peace to the heart racked with pain and care; and eventually, when the last sand has run out, to waft the liberated soul to the green pastures and the still waters of paradise: for have we not read how it is that they receive us into the everlasting habitations? And it is as revealing this general and universal law that the dream of Jacob is especially remarkable. What he saw then is always, unceasingly, going on. Ascending and descending I From the beginning of the worlds history until now that ever-moving host have been rushing to and fro, unseen, save by him who slumbered on the couch of stone. He called the place Bethel, and supposed that the particular spot on which he rested was opposite to the gate of heaven. Ah! vain imagination! in every quarter of creation the same dazzling scene is being enacted. From every part of the firmament are ever, ever issuing those watchers and holy ones. No foot of earth is unvisited by them, no tract of air is unswept by their forms of fire. In the bright sunshine they are with us; in the stilly hours of slumber they keep sentinel watch around us. Do you ask bow it happens that we feel them not? Yea, sirs, do we not feel their influence? Have we never experienced strong and irresistible impulses upon our minds to do certain things, impulses which we cannot explain, but which the event proves to have been for our good? Have we never been diverted, by sudden and unexpected accidents cast in our way, from going on some journey which, if we had pursued, we learn afterwards, would have been productive of loss of life or limb? What strange ominous forebodings and fears ofttimes seize upon men of the strongest minds, warnings of approaching perils or of coming death, warnings which, if listened unto, would enable many a man to prepare for his meeting with God. And all these things we would have you attribute to nothing less than the care and tenderness of those guardian spirits, who are never far absent from the heirs of salvation. And is there nothing more? Have we not seen or read of death-beds where the sufferer hath been soothed by whisperings unheard by other ears, and charmed with the melody of strains which none could catch save the parting soul? Oh, men and brethren, call it not what the infidel calls it, the wanderings of a disordered mind. Rather believe that angel-guards are verily near, nerving the soul in the last agony, and beckoning onwards to its rest. Rather believe that, as the earthly house of this tabernacle decays, the immortal spirit gets closer converse with celestial things. Rather learn to hope that ye too, when your last hour arrives, and ye stand trembling on the brink of eternity, may be calmed and encouraged by the sight of the ministers of grace, and see in a measure what Jacob saw of old, the angels of God ascending and descending around you.

II. If we take the vision as designed to instruct the mind of the patriarch as to angelic ministries, we cannot suppose the ladder planted upon the earth to be without significance. What, then, may we hence learn? what further light is hence thrown upon the mysterious subject of spiritual agency? Now, the first truth conveyed to us has reference, we think, to the nature of angels. Jacob saw angels ascending and descending, but he saw this descent and ascent accomplished by a ladder. There was an external and independent instrumentality. The language of Scripture does not teach us to regard the angels as purely spiritual creatures. It is probably the peculiar property of God alone to be entirely immaterial. God, it is emplastically declared, is a Spirit. He, and none beside Him, is wholly without bodily parts. It is, indeed, said of the Almighty, He maketh His angels spirits; but we are not hence to conclude that they have no body at all. When the term spirit is employed to denote the angelic nature, we must take it in a lower sense, to denote their exemption from those gross and earthly bodies which the inhabitants of this world possess. They are not flesh and blood, as we are; nor is their substance like any of those things that fall under our observation. Yet have they a body, subject, it would appear, to the action of time; for in the Book of Daniel the angel Gabriel declares that the command was given him to visit the prophet when he began his supplications; and it is added that, flying swiftly, he came to him and touched him about the hour of the evening sacrifice. Now, it is the proper attribute of a body, as distinguished from a pure spirit, to require time to convey itself from one locality to another. God is a Spirit, a perfect Spirit, and He is everywhere at once; a body cannot be in more than one spot at a time. The angels, then, we conclude, have bodies, but bodies of a most refined and glorious quality. The bodies of angels, we may conceive, are spiritual bodies; not like ours, sluggish and inactive, incapable of keeping pace with the nimble and rapid movements of the mind, but of a wonderful subtlety, travelling with an inconceivable velocity, possessed of stupendous power. Jacob saw them ascending and descending upon a ladder, spanning the space between heaven and earth. He did not behold them moving about in an instant, everywhere at once; there was the appearance of a material communication, just such as beings with bodies would require. To delineate purely spiritual creatures as ascending and descending upon a ladder would be an absurdity. The introduction of a ladder into the patriarchs dream is an intimation that the angels, though vastly more glorious than men, are yet utterly unlike God in their nature; that they are not, in short, quite free from the burden of matter. And it may be that higher truths still are taught by the erection of that mystic ladder, whose foot was upon the ground, and its top reaching unto heaven. We cannot wholly dissever the text from a remarkable speech of our blessed Lord. Hereafter, said Christ, shall ye see the heavens opened, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man. The Redeemer Himself steps forward as the interpreter of Jacobs dream, and represents Himself as fulfilling the type of the ladder which arrested the patriarchs gaze. And it is not hard to understand how this may be. For is it not through Christ, and for His merits, that the communication between man and God was not quite cut off at Adams fall? Was it not for Christs sake alone that the Almighty did not utterly excommunicate the race of men, and shut up His compassions from them? Indeed, indeed, if there has been angelic guardianship extended to the saints, if the seraphim and cherubim have busied themselves with this lower world, it has only been because Christ Jesus has vouchsafed to take our nature upon Him. He has been the Way. As none of us can come to the Father save by Him, so neither angel nor archangel can visit us save by Him. (Bishop Woodford.)

The Incarnation a helpful fact

Do you think the idea of the Incarnation too aerial and speculative to carry with you for help in rough, practical matters? The Incarnation is not a mere idea, but a fact as substantial and solidly rooted in life as anything you have to do with. Even the shadow of it Jacob saw carried in it so much of what was real that when he was broad awake he trusted it and acted on it. It was not scattered by the chill of the morning air, nor by that fixed staring reality which external nature assumes in the grey dawn as one object after another shows itself in the same spot and form in which night had fallen upon it. There were no angels visible when he opened his eyes; the staircase was there, but it was of no heavenly substance, and if it had any secret to tell, it coldly and darkly kept it. There was no retreat for the runaway from the poor common facts of yesterday. The sky seemed as far from earth as it did yesterday, his tract over the hills as lonely, his brothers wrath as real; but other things also had become real; and as he looked back from the top of the hill on the stone he had set up, he felt the words, I am with thee in all places whither thou goest, graven on his heart, and giving him new courage; and he knew that every footfall of his was making a Bethel, and that as he went he was carrying God through the world. The bleakest rain that swept across the hills of Bethel could never wash out of his mind the vision of bright-winged angels, as little as they could wash off the oil or wear down the stone he had set up. The brightest glare of this worlds heyday of real life could not outshine and cause them to disappear; and the vision on which we hope is not one that vanishes at cock-crow, nor is He who connects us with God shy of human handling, but substantial as ourselves. (M. Doris, D. D.)

The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Gen 28:10. Jacob went out from Beer-sheba — Unattended and alone, God, in his wise providence, so ordering it, for the greater illustration of his care over, and kindness toward him. But the great simplicity, humility, and innocence of those times, made many things usual then, which would now appear ridiculous.

Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

JACOB AT BETHEL, Gen_28:10-22.

A complex nature of manifold elements was that of Jacob. His cunning, and disposition to supplant and overreach, have been twice shown. Deceitfulness was a quality so conspicuous in his character as to have put him under the condemnation of all after time. But at the same time he was possessed of many higher qualities than Esau. The latter quickly showed out all he was; but many years and divers experiences were necessary to develop Jacob. In his more quiet soul there was a hiding of power; a susceptibility for divine things; a spiritual insight and longing that made him the fitter person to lead in the development of the chosen nation. The God of his fathers is now about to put him through a discipline that will eventually bring out his spiritual possibilities into bold relief. That which is now dead in him must be quickened by a divine energy from on high. He must suffer for his falsehood, and be wronged and deceived, and humbled in many ways; and at the same time he must receive much light and strength from Jehovah before he can cease to be the unworthy Jacob and become the prince of God.

10. Jacob went out from Beer-sheba — Very differently from the manner in which his father’s servant had gone out on a similar errand.

Gen_24:10.

Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

CHAPTER 28:10-22

And Jacob went out from Beersheba, in obedience to his father"s commandment to seek a wife (ver. 2), but also in compliance with his mother"s counsel to evade the wrath of Esau Gen_27:43; cf. Hos_12:12. On Beersheba vide Gen_21:31 Gen_26:33and went towards Haran probably along the route traversed by Abraham"s servant (cf. Gen_14:10)

Vers. 10-22.

Jacob at Bethel, or heaven opened.

I THE LONELY SLEEPER.

1. His desolate condition. Exiled from home, fleeing from the murderous resentment of a brother, o"er-canopied by the star-lit firmament, remote from human habitation, and encompassed by a heathen population, on the bleak summit of the Bethel plateau, upwards of sixty miles from Beersheba, the wandering son of Isaac makes his evening couch with a stone slab for his pillow, an emblem of many another footsore and dejected traveler upon life"s journey.

2. His inward cogitations. The current of his thoughts needs not be difficult to imagine. Mingling with the sadness of leaving home, and the apprehension with which he regarded the uncertain future, there could not fail to be a sense of security, if not a gleam of hope, arising from the consciousness that he carried with him his father"s blessing; in this again affording a reflex of most men"s lives, in which joy and sorrow, hope and fear, continually meet and strangely blend.

3. His heavenly visitation. If the dream by which Jacob"s slumber was disturbed was occasioned by unusual cerebral excitement, if its psychological framework was supplied by the peculiar color of his meditations, it is still true that it was made the medium of a Divine theophany and revelation. So God, who is "never far from any one of us," is specially near to his children in solitude and sorrow, "in dreams, in visions of the night, when deep sleep falleth upon men, in slumberings upon the bed, opening the ears of men, and sealing their instruction". (Job_33:15, Job_33:16)

II THE MIDNIGHT DREAM.

1. The celestial vision.

(1) A ladder reaching from earth to heaven; suggesting the thought of an open pathway of communication between God and man, and in particular between the heirs of the promise and their covenant God.

(2) The angels of God ascending and descending upon it; symbolizing God"s providential government of the world by means of the celestial hosts, (Psa_103:20, 21 104:4) but especially the ministry of angels towards the heirs of salvation (Psa_91:11; Heb_1:14) A truth henceforward to be exemplified in the experience of Jacob, and afterwards more fully, indeed completely and ideally, realized in Christ.

(3) Jehovah standing above it. The situation occupied by the symbolic presence of Jehovah was designed to indicate two things: first, that Jehovah was the true and only source whence blessing could descend to man; and, second, that the, pathway which had been opened up for sinful man conducted straight into God s immediate presence. Thus it was a visible unveiling of the grace and glory comprehended in the covenant, and now fully revealed by the gospel.

2. The accompanying voice.

(1) Proclaiming the Divine name; as the covenant God of Abraham and of Isaac, of which the New Testament interpretation is the God and Father of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, the true seed of Abraham.

(2) Renewing the covenant promises of a land, of a seed, of a blessing.

(3) Personally engaging to extend to Jacob continual attendance, I am with thee, constant protection, will keep thee in all thy goings, complete fidelity, will not leave thee," &c.; in all which again the voice was but an anticipatory echo of the heavenly voice that sounds in the gospel.

III THE AWE-STRUCK AWAKENING.

1. Devout impression. The night having passed in contemplation of the unseen world, the morning found the startled sleeper with a strong sense of the supernatural upon his soul, which filled him with alarm. Even to God"s reconciled children awe-inspiring (cf. Job_42:6; Isa_6:5; Rev_1:17) a vivid realization of the Divine presence is to the sinful heart overwhelmingly terrible.

2. Reverent adoration. "This is none other but the house of God implying ideas of Divine residence, the Lord is in this place!" Divine provision, the thoughts of "bread to eat and raiment to put on" appear to have been suggested to Jacob"s mind, and Divine communion Jacob realizes as never before the conception of personal intercoursebetween Jehovah and his people; the gate of heaven in which lie embedded the fundamental notions of nearness, vision, entrance.

3. Grateful commemoration.

(1) He sets up the stone slab on which his head had rested as a visible memorial of the sublime transaction which had there occurred, and in token of his gratitude pours the only gift he carried with him on it, viz., oil. Sincere piety demands that God"s merciful visitations should be remembered and thankfully acknowledged by offerings of the choicest and best of our possessions.

(2) He calls the name of the place Bethel: in the mean time with a view to his own comfort and satisfaction, but also, there is little doubt, with an eye to the instruction and encouragement of his descendants. It is dutiful in saints not only to rejoice their own hearts by the recollection of Divine mercies, but also to take measures for transmitting the knowledge of them to future generations.

IV THE SOLEMN VOW.

1. Faiths expectation. In a spirit not of mercenary stipulation, but of believing anticipation, Jacob expresses confidence in henceforth enjoying

(1) Divine companionship or since, "God will be with me;

(2) Divine protection "and will keep me in this way that I go;

(3) Divine sustenance will give me bread to eat, and raiment to put on;

(4) Divine favor that I come again to my father"s house in peace;" and

(5) Divine salvation or rather, and since, "Jehovah shall be my God; five things promised to the poorest and most desolate of heaven"s pilgrims.

2. Faiths resolution. Confidently anticipating the fulfillment of God"s promises, Jacob resolves

(1) To erect an altar at Bethel on returning to the Holy Land, a vow which he afterwards fulfilled. Whatever vows God"s people make should be paid, and no vows are more agreeable to God"s will than those which have for their objects the cultivation of personal piety and the perpetuation and spread of his religion among men.

(2) To consecrate the tenth part of his increase to God, i.e. to the maintenance of God"s worship an example of pious liberality which has seldom been approached by Christ"s followers, though, considering their higher privileges and obligations, it ought to have been frequently surpassed.

HOMILIES BY R.A. REDFORD Vers. 10-22.

Jacob"s dream.

Where revelations had been vouchsafed it was supposed that they would be repeated. The stony pillow on which the weary head rested may be changed by the visitation of Divine grace into the meeting-place of heaven and earth. The morning beams breaking in upon the shadowy refuge of the night are transfigured into a dream of covenant blessing. The ladder set up on the earth, the top of it reached to heaven. Angels of God on the way of mediation, ascending, descending, carrying up the wants and services of the man of God, bringing clown the messages of consolation, the vouchsafements of help and deliverance. Behold, the Lord stood above it," as the source of all the blessing, standing ready to work for his chosen. This is the first direct communication of Jehovah to Jacob, the first in a long line of revelations of which he was the recipient. It is a renewal of the covenant made to his fathers, it is a republication of the promises. But we require to hear the Lord say to us, "I am with thee, I will not leave thee," especially when we are already on the journey of faith, when we are obeying the commandment of God, and of the father and mother speaking in his name. Such a place as Jacob found may be made known to us

I IN PROVIDENTIAL INTERPOSITIONS. We journey on through the wilderness and light upon a certain place where we think we are only among stony facts, where we can find but a harsh welcome; but the Lord is in the place, though we know it not till he reveals himself. Then we cry with trembling gratitude, This is the house of God, &c. ;

II IN SEASONS or RELIGIOUS OPPORTUNITY. The ordinary and customary is lifted up by special gift of the Spirit" "into" the opened heaven, the visiting, angels, the vision of the throne of God. "The house of God, the gate of heaven. Such may be the awaking of our soul in the sanctuary of our own private devotions or of our public worship.

III Jacob is A TYPE OF THE LORD"S PEOPLE REGARDED AS A WHOLE. The Church has often laid itself down upon the stones and slept with weariness in its passage through the desert, and the Lord has revealed the ladder of his covenant, connecting together that very place and time of hardship with the throne of grace and. glory, and the ascending and descending angels.

IV Jesus himself employed this dream of the patriarch as A TYPICAL PROPHECY OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD. "Heaven open, and the angels of God Ascending and descending upon the Son of man," the true Jacob, the Prince prevailing with God and with men. (Joh_1:51) The cross is the ladder of mediation. It was set up on the earth. It was not of earthly origin as a means of atonement, but its foot was on the earth as it came forth out of the method and course of earthly history in connection with Divine counsels. Its top reached to heaven, for it was a Divine Mediator whose sacrifice was offered upon it. Angels of God ascended and descended upon the ladder, for only through the atoning merit of Christ is angelic ministration maintained. It is for them "who shall be heirs of salvation." At the summit of the cross, representing the whole mediatorial work of Christ, is the Lord standing, speaking his word of covenant, and stretching forth his right hand on behalf of his people. Resting at the foot of the cross we hear the voice of a faithful Guide, saying, "I will not leave thee," &c. In every place one who is conscious of surrounding covenant mercy can say, "This is none other but the house of God," &c. R. ;

The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

CRITICAL NOTES.—

Gen_28:11. And he lighted upon a certain place.] “The term means he fell upon the place, as the providential stopping-place incidentally coming upon it, or coming up to it, as the lodging place for the night. This place was about forty-eight miles from Beersheba, and eight miles north of Jerusalem, near the town of Bethel, and is defined as the place from its being so well known in the history.” (Jacobus.)—

Gen_28:12. A ladder.] “Whether it was the vision of a common ladder or flight of steps, or whether, as some suppose, it was a pile of mountain terraces, matters little. The flight of steps hewn in the rocky sides of the mountain near Tyre, on the edge of the Mediterranean, is called “the ladder of Tyre.” (Jacobus.)—

Gen_28:17. How dreadful is this place!] Heb. “Awe-inspiring, commonly rendered fearful or terrible.” (Jacobus.)—

Gen_28:18. Took the stone.] A collective singular for “stones,” as it appears from Gen_28:11 that there was more than one of them. Poured oil upon the top of it.] This was an act of consecration to God.—

Gen_28:19. And he called the name of that place Beth-el.] This name means the house of God, and was not now for the first time given. Abraham also worshipped God here, and found that the place already bore this name. (Gen_12:8; Gen_13:3; Gen_25:30.) But the name of that city was called Luz at the first. “The city in the immediate neighbourhood was, at the time, called Luz. The descendants of the patriarchs transferred the name of Bethel to that city. The Canaanites, not caring for this, continued to call it Luz, which was retained till Joshua occupied the land. Bethel, the holy place, is distinguished from Luz, the city. (Kurtz).—

Gen_28:20. If God will be with me, and keep me in the way that I go, and will give me bread to eat and raiment to pat on.] “This is not making any condition with God, for this is only a recital of the promise, and is more properly rendered since—inasmuch as. It expresses no doubt or contingency. ‘I, if I be lifted up,’ means ‘as surely as I shall be lifted up.’ And so here—as surely as God will be with me (has promised to be).” (Jacobus.)—

Gen_28:21. Then shall the Lord be my God.] “And (so surely as) he shall be my God, my covenant God—the same as He has been to Abraham and Isaac, so shall this stone.” (Hengstenberg.)—

Gen_28:22. God’s house. “A place sacred to the memory of God’s presence—as a place where He manifested Himself. The apostle calls ‘the Church the pillar and ground of the truth,’ alluding to this passage.” (1Ti_3:14.) (Jacobus.)—

Gen_28:22. I will surely give the tenth unto thee.] After the example of Abraham. (Gen_14:20.) The number ten, being the last of the cardinal numbers, expresses the idea of perfection.

MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.—Gen_28:10-22

JACOB’S VISION

I. It was vouchsafed to him in a time of inward and outward trouble. The sense of his sin is now lying hard upon Jacob. He had been guilty of deceit, had incurred the anger of his brother, and disturbed the peace of his father’s household. He had claimed his title to the blessing in a self-righteous frame of mind, and gained admission for that claim by unrighteous means. As long as he is supported by his mother’s sympathy and by the excitement of success, he feels but little sense of shame and sorrow. But this is the time with him of outward trouble; and the thought of his sin is forced upon him, and he has also inward trouble. He who had never left his father’s house before, for whom everything was provided, now becomes a wanderer. He is left all alone on an untried journey. He set out in the sunshine, and as he was young and vigorous he could keep his spirits from sinking under despondency. But now night comes on. He has no tent, no pillow. He is alone with himself, all seems desolate around him, and he is like one forsaken. A sense of sin rests upon his soul, and a vague dread of unknown terrors. It was thus when everything in life seemed against him that this vision was vouchsafed.

II. It satisfied all his necessities. I. His spiritual necessities.

(1) It assured him that heaven and earth were not separated by an impassable gulf. Sin has created a distance between God and man. Men feel this when they think at all upon the subject. They think upon the righteous character, and sadly feel that they are not so with God. Jacob felt now that he had sinned, the heavens seemed to him as brass—no opening there, no voice or sign from God above. He himself was oppressed by a sense of sin, and dared not look up. Then it was that this dream assured him that there was no necessity for despair, that heaven and earth, the sinner’s soul and God could yet be brought near together.

(2) It assured him that there was a way of reconciliation between God and man. The gulf was bridged over. There was a way of communication between heaven and earth, in both directions, so that the love of heaven was sent down and the answer of the human heart was returned. Not only was the way to heaven opened, but it proved to be a well-trodden path. Messengers of mercy were descending from the highest heaven, and thankful prayers and praises were ascending thither.

3. It assured him that the love of God was above all the darkness of human sin and evil. God was at the top of this ladder (Gen_28:13). The Lord above, and the object of His mercy beneath, and a way of communication opened up between both. Thus God is the author of salvation, and we are accepted through a Mediator.

4. It imparted to him the blessings of a revelation from God. The Lord spake to Jacob, renewing the old promises made to his father Abraham, and assuring him that he would have protection to the end (Gen_28:13-15). It is revelation when God speaks to man. We cannot know the mind and purpose of God concerning us unless He thus declares Himself. Good things might have been prepared for us through the mercy of God, and yet we might have been unaware of them until He was pleased to make them known. There are those who say that we can have no revelation from heaven. But can we deny to God the right to speak and declare Himself—a right which we willingly concede to all His intelligent creatures? We are not left to draw rational, and too often precarious, inferences from the known dealings of God; but we have the advantage of a distinct declaration of His mind. We Christians have heard the voice of God through His word. We have heard His exceeding great and precious promises. We have a “ladder”—a way of reconciliation to God through Christ, who unites the human with the divine. Through and by Him we have access to the Father. Our prayers have free course to ascend to heaven, and the Holy Spirit descends into our hearts to inspire them. In the incarnation, God is no longer at the head of the ladder but at the foot, brought quite near to us, seeing that we have “God manifest in the flesh.”

III. It revealed the awful solemnity of human life. When Jacob awaked out of his sleep, 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.” (Gen_28:16-17.) Things that were regarded hitherto as common are now invested with an awful interest and significance, and are felt to be pervaded by a Divine presence. Such is human life when God awakens us to a sense of the reality of things. We may pass through this life quite thoughtlessly, but when we begin to think seriously, then life becomes solemn. Mystery lies on all sides of us. Whence are we? Whither do we tend? This life of ours is touched, overshadowed, and informed by a higher life. When God opens the eye of our soul, we need not travel far to some holy shrine to draw near before Him; for we are already in His house, and at the very gate of heaven. When this dream of life is over, we shall waken up to the true reality of things.

IV. It resulted in Jacob’s conversion. Jacob before this time was a worldly man. He was of the earth, earthy. Now his character is changed, not only outwardly, but inwardly. He becomes a spiritual man. All things are now seen in a new light. To know the realities of God, not from tradition, or as the fruit of speculation, but from a heartfelt and true knowledge, is the conversion of our soul. Balaam felt that Israel was a righteous nation, and that Jacob was a righteous man, when he said, “Let me die the death of the righteous, and let my last end be like his.” “He hath not beheld iniquity in Jacob, neither hath he seen perverseness in Israel: the Lord his God is with him, and the shout of a king is among them.” (Num_23:10-21.) This vision is Jacob’s conversion, and his conduct afterwards gives evidence of that great change.

1. He erected a memorial of the event. He marked the spot, so that he might ever be reminded of that solemn night. Thus the impressions of the whole scene would be fixed deep in his mind for ever. The value of forms lie in the fact that they give us something material to rest upon. Where God has revealed himself to us is our holy place, our Bethel.

2. He resolved to make God supreme in all his thoughts and actions. “Then shall the Lord be my God.” (Gen_28:21.) Henceforward he would not worship honour, pleasure, or the world. He would respect all the rights of God, and make a full surrender of himself and of his worldly substance. (Gen_28:22.) He is now altogether a devoted man; being no longer his own, but belonging to God. To have the Lord for our God is something more than an impression or a saying. It is the doing of His will. Knowledge and feeling are converted into action.

SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS ON THE VERSES

Gen_28:10. Jacob’s departure from his father’s house formed a striking contrast with the pompous mission which had been sent to the same country when a wife was to be procured for Isaac. Without a servant to attend him, or a beast to carry him, being provided only with “a staff” to walk with (as he afterwards informs us), he pursues his solitary way. (Gen_32:10.) We here behold the heir of the promise, the chosen servant of God, in whose loins were an elect people, and many powerful kings, whose history was to occupy so large a space in the book of God; in whom all the families of the earth were to be blessed; a forlorn wanderer, banished from his father’s house, his whole inheritance his staff in his hand. But the sequel informs us that in the midst of this scene of outer and inner darkness God was graciously preparing a message of peace and joy for His exiled servant.—(Bush.)

Gen_28:11. He lighted upon a certain place, little thinking to have found heaven there. Let this comfort travellers and friends that part with them. Jacob never lay better than when he lay without-doors; nor yet slept sweeter than when he laid his head upon a stone.” (Trapp.)

Jacob, in this wretched condition on his journey, is a symbol of the Messiah. Christ had not where to lay his head. (Lange.)

A solemn conviction is stealing over Jacob of what life is, a struggle which each man must make in self dependence. He is fairly afloat like a young swimmer, without corks, striking out for his life; dependant on self for defence, guidance, choice. Childhood is a state of dependence; but man passes from the state of dependence into that in which he must stand alone. It is a solemn crisis, because the way in which it is met often decides the character of the future life.—(Robertson.)

Probably Jacob found the gates of the city shut upon his arrival, and was obliged to spend the night in the open air. In the time of their darkest calamity God comes to the aid of His servants.

Perhaps the declining sun never withdrew its light from one more deep in gloom than Jacob when he paused at Luz. The canopy of heaven was his only roof—the bare earth his couch—the rugged stone his pillow. Instead of a tender mother’s tender care, he had hardness in its hardest form. The Lord, whose love is wisdom, and whose wisdom is love, leads His children into depths for their good; but leaves them not in depths to their hurt. It was so with Jacob. It will be so, while saints on earth need to be brought low, that they may more securely rise. (“Christ is All,” by Archdeacon Law.)

Gen_28:12. God made a direct communication to his soul. “He lay down to sleep, and he dreamed.” We know what dreams are. They are strange combinations of our waking thoughts in fanciful forms, and we may trace in Jacob’s previous journey the groundwork of his dream. He looked up all day to heaven as he trudged along, the glorious expanse of an Oriental sky was around him, a quivering, trembling, mass of blue; but he was alone, and, when the stars came out, melancholy sensations were his, such as youth frequently feels in the autumn time. Deep questionings beset him. Time he felt was fleeting. Eternity, what was it? Life, what a mystery! And all this took form in his dream. Thus far, all was natural; the supernatural in this dream was the manner in which God impressed it upon his heart. Similar dreams we have often had; but the remembrance of them has often faded away. Conversion is the impression made by circumstances, and that impression lasting for life; it is God the Spirit’s work upon the soul.—(Robertson).

Our Saviour applies these words to Himself, the true ladder of life, through whom alone we are able to ascend to heaven (Joh_1:51). He that will go up any other way must, as the emperor once said, erect a ladder and go up alone. He touched heaven, in respect to His Deity; earth in respect of His humanity; and joined earth to heaven, by reconciling man to God. Gregory speaks elegantly of Christ, that he joined heaven and earth together, as with a bridge; being the only true Pontifex, or bridge-maker. Heaven is now open and obvious to them that acknowledge Him their sole Mediator, and lay hold, by the hand of faith, on His merits, as the rounds of this heavenly ladder. These only ascend; that is, their consciences are drawn out of the depths of despair, and put into heaven, as it were, by pardon and peace with God, rest sweetly in His bosom, calling Him Abba, Father, and have the holy angels ascending to report their necessities, and descending, as messengers of mercies. We must also ascend, saith St. Bernard, by those two feet, as it were—meditation and prayer: yea, there must be continual ascensions in our hearts; and as Jacob saw the angels ascending and descending, and none standing still, so must we be active and abundant in God’s work (1Co_15:58).—(Trapp.)

As connecting earth and heaven it was a striking image of mediation and reconciliation by Him who is the Way. This is the New Testament explanation of it (Joh_1:51). The idea plainly is of communication opened with heaven, which had been cut off by sin. And the immediate application of it is the providential care which is secured to him by the covenant. Angelic messengers traversing this stairway executing the gracious purposes of Redemption (Heb_1:14), and all on the basis of the mediation of Christ, the Angel of the Covenant—this is the traveller’s vision.—(Jacobus.)

Gen_28:13. God stands above the methods and means of Providence and Grace. The Divine love is the fountain of Redemption.

The heavenly ladder seen by Jacob in a dream, on which angels were ascending and descending, with the Lord himself at the summit, was itself but the weak intimation of a closer union between earth and heaven to be effected in the person of the Son of Man—an union wherein God should no longer appear far off, but near; men now at last beholding the “heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.”—(Trench.)

By this promise Jacob is secured beyond the reach of his brother’s wrath.

It is remarkable that Abraham is styled his father, that is, his actual grandfather, and covenant father.—(Murphy.)

From Jacob’s ladder we receive the first definite intimation that beyond Sheol, heaven is the home of man.—(Lange.)

What an honour is this to Abraham, that God was not ashamed to be called his and his son’s God! “Friend to Sir Philip Sidney,” is engraven upon a nobleman’s tomb in this kingdom, as one of his titles. Behold the goodness of God, stooping so low as to style Himself “the God of Abraham;” and Abraham again, “the friend of God.”—(Trapp.)

It is enough for us to be assured that God will be the same to us as He has been to our fathers, and that He will perform the same for us. By faith we become heirs of an ancient heritage, which is secure to us as an eternal possession—as long as God is our God.

Gen_28:14. This expression points to the world-wide universality of the kingdom of the seed of Abraham, when it shall become the fifth monarchy, that shall subdue all that went before, and endure for ever. This transcends the destiny of the natural seed of Abraham.—(Murphy.)

Against his four-fold cross, here is a four-fold comfort.

1. Against the loss of his friends, “I will be with thee.”

2. Of his country, “I will give thee this land.”

3. Against his poverty, “Thou shalt spread abroad to the east, west,” etc.

4. His solitariness; angels shall attend thee, and “thy seed shall be as the dust,” etc. And “who can count the dust of Jacob,” saith Balaam. (Num_23:10.) Now, whatsoever God spake here with Jacob, He spake with us, as well as with him, saith Hosea. (Hos_12:4.—(Trapp.)

Gen_28:15. He then promises to Jacob personally to be with him, protect him, and bring him back in safety. This is the third announcement of the seed that blesses to the third in the line of descent. (Gen_12:2-3; Gen_22:18; Gen_26:4.—(Murphy.)

Jacob was lonely, on an untried journey, with an uncertain fate before him. What could have been more comforting and assuring than this promise of protection in his travels, a safe return home, and success in his mission; and all because he was heir of the covenant? Thus God’s promises, while they are all-embracing, are suited to our special need.

Esau’s blessing was soon fulfilled; but Jacob’s related to things at a great distance, and which none but “God Almighty” could bring to pass. How seasonable then were those precious promises which furnished at his outset a ground for faith to rest upon!—(Fuller.)

Gen_28:16. He who had felt no fear in laying himself down to sleep in a lonely place, and under the cloud of night, is now filled with a holy dismay when the morning arose at the thought of being surrounded with God. But the element of joy was not extinguished by the feeling of the awful which the scene had inspired. The Lord had been specially present to him where he little thought of meeting with Him. He had laid him down to sleep, as on common ground, but he found that it was a consecrated place, hallowed by the presence of God Himself in this blessed vision of the night. It seemed a lone and uninviting spot, but it proved to him a magnificent temple.—(Bush.)

He knew His omnipresence. But he did not expect a special manifestation of the Lord in this place, far from the sanctuaries of his father.—(Murphy.)

The commonest things of life become sacred if we only think deeply about them.

We do not really discover God anywhere, not even in His Word, unless He reveals Himself inwardly to our souls. Then do we truly know that God was there, though we knew it not.

Every fresh revelation of God obliges us to confess our ignorance and inattention in the past.

Gen_28:17. This was the place where God manifested Himself as He was wont to do in the sanctuary.

In whatever place the soul of man feels the presence and power of God, there is the House of God.

The place of God’s public worship is a place of angels and archangels, saith Chrysostom; it is the Kingdom of God; it is very heaven. What wonder, then, though Jacob be afraid, albeit, he saw nothing but visions of love and mercy. “In Thy fear will I worship toward Thy holy temple,” saith David (Psa_5:7).—(Trapp.)

The last impression made upon Jacob was that of the awfulness of life. Children play away life. It is a touching and softening thing to see the child, without an aim or thought, playing away his young moments; but it is sad indeed to see men and women do this, for life is a solemn mystery, full of questions that we cannot answer. Whence come we? Whither go we? How came we here? Say you that life is short, that it is a shadow, a dream, a vapour, a puff of air? Yes, it is short, but has an eternity wrapped up in it; it is a dream, but an awful, and appalling one, the most solemn dream of eternity that we shall ever have. Remember this is the gate of heaven, this is a dreadful place, the common is the Divine; God is here.—(Robertson.)

Earth is a court of Paradise; life, here below, is a short pilgrimage; our home is above, and the life of a blessed eternity illuminates our path.—(Krummacher.)

Where God’s Word is found, there is a house of God. There heaven stands open.—(Lange.)

We must daily wait at the gate of heaven if we would enter there.

Gen_28:18. He was in no condition to indulge in sleep. He must be up and expressing the homage of his soul for such precious, gracious revelations.—(Jacobus.)

He set up a memorial of the impressions just made upon him. He erected a few stones, and called them Bethel. They were a fixed point to remind him of the past. The power of this Bethel we shall see in the 35th chap. Herein is the value of forms; impressions, feelings, will pass away unless we have some memorial. If we were merely spiritual beings then we might do without forms; but we are still mixed up with matter, and unless we have a form the spirit will die. Resolve then, like Jacob, to keep religion in mind by the use of religious rites. Church-going, the keeping of the Sabbath, are not religion; but religion hardly lives without them. If a man will say, I can read the Bible at home, think of Christ without attending the Holy Communion, make every day a Sabbath, why his religion will die out with his omission of the form.—(Robertson.)

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 Lev_26:1; Deu_7:5; Deu_12:3, that God has expressly prohibited these things.—(Lange.)

Gen_28:19. This place was long regarded with religious veneration, as we may infer from Jereboam’s having chosen it for the seat of his idolatrous worship of the golden calves (1Ki_12:28; 1Ki_12:23), for which reason the prophet Hosea, (Hos_4:15) alluding to the name given it by Jacob, calls it, Beth-aven, “the house of vanity”—i.e., of idols—instead of Beth-el, “house of God.” In like manner, (Amo_5:5): “Bethel shall shall come to naught.” (Heb. shall be Aven). A good name has no security of permanence where a change for the worse has taken place in the character. God even writes upon His own people, Lo-Ammi, “not my people,” instead of Ammi, “my people,” when by their transgression they forfeit His favour.—(Bush.)

Gen_28:20. It must not be understood from his conditional mode of expression that he had any doubt as to the fulfilment of the Divine promise, or that he would prescribe terms to his Maker. The language implies nothing more than his taking God at His word—a sincere avowal, that since the Lord had promised him the bestowment of inestimable blessings, he would endeavour not to be wanting in the suitable returns of duty and devotedness. God had promised to be with him, to keep him, to bring him again into the land, and not to leave him. He takes up the precious words, and virtually says, “Oh, let it be according to Thy word unto Thy servant, and Thou shalt be mine, and I will be Thine for ever.” This was all right; for Jacob sought nothing which God had not promised, and he could not well err while making the Divine promises the rule and measure of his desires.—(Bush.)

The order of what he desired is deserving of notice. It corresponds with our Saviour’s rule, to seek things of the greatest importance first. By how much God’s favour is better than life, by so much His being with us, and keeping us is better than food and raiment.—(Fuller.)

The desires of Jacob were moderate. He only asks for the bare necessaries of life. He seeks not high things for himself—no wealth, or rank, or luxury. We know from the case of Solomon that such modest desires are approved by God, who is wont to fulfil them even beyond what we have asked. (1Ki_3:5-12.)

Nature is content with little; grace with less. “Food and drink are the riches of Christians,” saith Jerome. Bread and water, with the Gospel, are good cheer. One told a philosopher, “If you will be content to please Dionysius, you need not feed upon green herbs. He replied, “And if you be content to feed upon green herbs, you need not please Dionysius.”—(Trapp.)

Gen_28:21. This is not the condition in which Jacob will accept God in a mercenary spirit. It is the response of the son to the assurance of the father. “Wilt Thou indeed be with me? Thou shalt be my God.”—(Murphy.)

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. But what 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.—(Lange.)

The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary (gen. ed. Joseph S. Exell; Funk & Wagnalls, c. 1892) — public domain (pre-1929). A full-Bible homiletical/sermon-outline anthology covering 65 of 66 books (2 John is absent from the source module). Text from a community e-Sword module.

C.

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

FIRST SECTION

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

Gen_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 (Gen_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 Gen_22:4). Bethel (see Gen_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 Joh_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 Gen_22:17; Gen_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 (Gen_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 Exo_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 (Gen_31:45; Gen_35:14; Jos_4:9; Jos_4:20; Jos_24:26; 1Sa_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 Gen_35:15; comp. Gen_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 (Gen_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 Gen_48:3, where Jacob in Egypt characterizes in general the region of this divine revelation. From Jos_16:2; Jos_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 (Gen_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 (Gen_35:7; Gen_28:16), and Israel fulfilled it more completely. The tithes, that first appear in Abraham’s history (Gen_14:20), were no doubt employed by Jacob, at his return, for burnt-offerings and thank-offerings and charitable gifts (see below) (Gen_31:54; Gen_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 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 Joh_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. Gen_28:20-21. 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, Gen_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 (Gen_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.)

Gen_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 (Rom_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 (Psa_91:2; Isa_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), Heb_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, Gen_28:16-22. Starke: Surely the Lord. Chald.: The glory of the Lord.

Gen_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.)

Gen_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 Lev_26:1; Deu_7:5; Deu_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 (Jer_23:24), he is yet especially near to his church with his grace, his spirit, and his blessing (Joh_14:18; Mat_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 (Exo_23:19; Exo_34:26); b. the first and second temple at Jerusalem, etc.

Gen_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 (Gal_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 (Deu_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).

Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures (Critical, Doctrinal, and Homiletical), ed. John Peter Lange, English translation edited by Philip Schaff (1864–1880) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Genesis

THE HEAVENLY PATHWAY AND THE EARTHLY HEART

Gen 28:10 - Gen 28:22.

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.

Alexander MacLaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture (1904–1910) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

28:10-22 Despite Jacob’s previous means of securing the blessing, God assured him of protection and provision. The God of Abraham and Isaac was also the God of Jacob. The revelation dramatically changed Jacob’s outlook and brought faith into clearer focus.

Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

We have here Jacob upon his journey towards Syria, in a very desolate condition, like one that was sent to seek his fortune; but we find that, though he was alone, yet he was not alone, for the Father was with him, Joh 16:32. If what is here recorded happened (as it should seem it did) the first night, he had made a long day's journey from Beersheba to Bethel, above forty miles. Providence brought him to a convenient place, probably shaded with trees, to rest himself in that night; and there he had,

I. A hard lodging (Gen 28:11), the stones for his pillows, and the heavens for his canopy and curtains. As the usage then was, perhaps this was not so bad as it seems how to us; but we should think, 1. He lay very cold, the cold ground for his bed, and, which one would suppose made the matter worse, a cold stone for his pillow, and in the cold air. 2. Very uneasy. If his bones were sore with his day's journey, his night's rest would but make them sorer. 3. Very much exposed. He forgot that he was fleeing for his life; or had his brother, in his rage, pursued, or sent a murderer after him, here he lay ready to be sacrificed, and destitute of shelter and defence. We cannot think it was by reason of his poverty that he was so ill accommodated, but, (1.) It was owing to the plainness and simplicity of those times, when men did not take so much state, and consult their ease so much, as in these later times of softness and effeminacy. (2.) Jacob had been particularly used to hardships, as a plain man dwelling in tents; and, designing now to go to service, he was the more willing to inure himself to them; and, as it proved, it was well, Gen 31:40. (3.) His comfort in the divine blessing, and his confidence in the divine protection, made him easy, even when he lay thus exposed; being sure that his God made him to dwell in safety, he could lie down and sleep upon a stone.

II. In his hard lodging he had a pleasant dream. Any Israelite indeed would be willing to take up with Jacob's pillow, provided he might but have Jacob's dream. Then, and there, he heard the words of God, and saw the visions of the Almighty. It was the best night's sleep he ever had in his life. Note, God's time to visit his people with his comforts is when they are most destitute of other comforts, and other comforters; when afflictions in the way of duty (as these were) do abound, then shall consolations so much the more abound. Now observe here,

1. The encouraging vision Jacob saw, Gen 28:12. He saw a ladder which reached from earth to heaven, the angels ascending and descending upon it, and God himself at the head of it. Now this represents the two things that are very comfortable to good people at all times, and in all conditions: - (1.) The providence of God, by which there is a constant correspondence kept up between heaven and earth. The counsels of heaven are executed on earth, and the actions and affairs of this earth are all known in heaven are executed on earth, and the actions and affairs of this earth are all known in heaven and judged there. Providence does its work gradually, and by steps. Angels are employed as ministering spirits, to serve all the purposes and designs of Providence, and the wisdom of God is at the upper end of the ladder, directing all the motions of second causes to the glory of the first Cause. The angels are active spirits, continually ascending and descending; they rest not, day nor night, from service, according to the posts assigned them. They ascend, to give account of what they have done, and to receive orders; and then descend, to execute the orders they have received. Thus we should always abound in the work of the Lord, that we may do it as the angels do it, Psa 103:20, Psa 103:21. This vision gave very seasonable comfort to Jacob, letting him know that he had both a good guide and a good guard, in his going out and coming in, - that, though he was made to wander from his father's house, yet still he was the care of a kind Providence, and the charge of the holy angels. This is comfort enough, though we should not admit the notion which some have, that the tutelar angels of Canaan were ascending, having guarded Jacob out of their land, and the angels of Syria descending to take him into their custody. Jacob was now the type and representative of the whole church, with the guardianship of which the angels are entrusted. (2.) The mediation of Christ. He is this ladder, the foot on earth in his human nature, the top in heaven in his divine nature: or the former in his humiliation, the latter in his exaltation. All the intercourse between heaven and earth, since the fall, is by this ladder. Christ is the way; all God's favours come to us, and all our services go to him, by Christ. If God dwell with us, and we with him, it is by Christ. We have no way of getting to heaven, but by this ladder; if we climb up any other way we are thieves and robbers. To this vision our Saviour alludes when he speaks of the angels of God ascending and descending upon the son of man (Joh 1:51); for the kind offices the angels do us, and the benefits we receive by their ministration, are all owing to Christ, who has reconciled things on earth and things in heaven (Col 1:20), and made them all meet in himself, Eph 1:10.

2. The encouraging words Jacob heard. God now brought him into the wilderness, and spoke comfortably to him, spoke from the head of the ladder; for all the glad tidings we receive from heaven come through Jesus Christ.

(1.) The former promises made to his father were repeated and ratified to him, Gen 28:13, Gen 28:14. In general, God intimated to him that he would be the same to him that he had been to Abraham and Isaac. Those that tread in the steps of their godly parents are interested in their covenant and entitled to their privileges. Particularly, [1.] The land of Canaan is settled upon him, the land whereon thou liest; as if by his lying so contentedly upon the bare ground he had taken livery and seisin of the whole land. [2.] It is promised him that his posterity should multiply exceedingly as the dust of the earth - that, though he seemed now to be plucked off as a withered branch, yet he should become a flourishing tree, that should send out his boughs unto the sea. These were the blessings with which his father had blessed him (Gen 28:3, Gen 28:4), and God here said Amen to them, that he might have strong consolation. [3.] It is added that the Messiah should come from his loins, in whom all the families of the earth should be blessed. Christ is the great blessing of the world. All that are blessed, whatever family they are of, are blessed in him, and none of any family are excluded from blessedness in him, but those that exclude themselves.

(2.) Fresh promises were made him, accommodated to his present condition, Gen 28:15. [1.] Jacob was apprehensive of danger from his brother Esau; but God promises to keep him. Note, Those are safe whom god protects, whoever pursues them. [2.] He had now a long journey before him, had to travel alone, in an unknown road, to an unknown country; but, behold, I am with thee, says God. Note, Wherever we are, we are safe, and may be easy, if we have God's favourable presence with us. [3.] He knew not, but God foresaw, what hardships he should meet with in his uncle's service, and therefore promises to preserve him in all places. Note, God knows how to give his people graces and comforts accommodated to the events that shall be, as well as to those that are. [4.] He was now going as an exile into a place far distant, but God promises him to bring him back again to this land. Note, He that preserves his people's going out will also take care of their coming in, Psa 121:8. [5.] He seemed to be forsaken of all his friends, but God here gives him this assurance, I will not leave thee. Note, Whom God loves he never leaves. This promise is sure to all the seed, Heb 13:5. [6.] Providences seemed to contradict the promises; he is therefore assured of the performance of them in their season: All shall be done that I have spoken to thee of. Note, Saying and doing are not two things with God, whatever they are with us.

Matthew Henry's Commentary on the Whole Bible (1708–1710) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

Jacob went out, &c.--His departure from his father's house was an ignominious flight; and for fear of being pursued or waylaid by his vindictive brother, he did not take the common road, but went by lonely and unfrequented paths, which increased the length and dangers of the journey.

Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

10. And Jacob went out. In the course of this history we must especially observe, how the Lord preserved his own Church in the person of one man. For Isaac, on account of his age, lay like a dry trunk; and although the living root of piety was concealed within his breast, yet no hope of further offspring remained in his exhausted and barren old age. Esau, like a green and flourishing branch, had much of show and splendor, but his vigor was only momentary. Jacob, as a severed twig, was removed into a far distant land; not that, being ingrafted or planted there, he should acquire strength and greatness, but that, being moistened with the dew of heaven, he might put forth his shoots as into the air itself. For the Lord wonderfully nourishes him, and supplies him with strength, until he shall bring him back again to his father’s house. Meanwhile, let the reader diligently observe, that while he who was blessed by God is cast into exile; occasion of glorying was given to the reprobate Esau, who was left in the possession of everything, so that he might securely reign without a rival. Let us not, then, be disturbed, if at any time the wicked sound their triumphs, as having gained their wishes, while we are oppressed. Moses mentions the name of Beersheba, because, as it formed one of the boundaries of the land of Canaan, and lay towards the great desert and the south, it was the more remote from the eastern region towards which Jacob was going. He afterwards adds Charran, (Genesis 29:1,) where Abraham, when he left his own country, dwelt for some time. Now, it appears that not only the pious old man Terah, when he followed his son, or accompanied him on his journey, came to Charran where he died; but that his other son Nahor, with his family, also came to the same place. For we read in the eleventh chapter (Genesis 11:1,) that Terah took his son Abraham, and Lot his grandson, and Sarai his daughter-in-law. Whence we infer that Nahor, at that time, remained in Chaldea, his native country. But now, since Moses says, that Laban dwelt at Charran, we may hence conjecture, that Nahor, in order that he might not appear guilty of the inhumanity of deserting his father, afterwards gathered together his goods and came to him.

Moses here, in a few words, declares what a severe and arduous journey the holy man (Jacob) had, on account of its great length: to which also another circumstance is added; namely, that he lay on the ground, under the open sky, without a companion, and without a habitation. But as Moses only briefly alludes to these facts, so will I also avoid prolixity, as the thing speaks for itself. Wherefore, if, at any time, we think ourselves to be roughly treated, let us remember the example of the holy man, as a reproof to our fastidiousness.

John Calvin's Commentaries (1540-1563) — public domain. Text from the Calvin Translation Society English edition (1840s-50s) via the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (ccel.org). Calvin's coverage is partial (roughly two-thirds of the Bible); uncommented books and verses are honest gaps, never fabricated. The 19th-century editor's footnotes and remarks are omitted so the notes are faithfully Calvin's own voice.

JACOB’S DREAM.

(10) And Jacob.—Though this history is called the Tôldôth Isaac, yet it is really the history of Jacob, just as the Tôldôth Terah was the history of Abraham, and the Tôldôth Jacob, beginning at Gen_37:2, is the history of Joseph. Up to this time all had been preparation, but now at length Jacob is confirmed in the possession of the birthright, and made the heir of the Abrahamic blessing; and henceforward his fortunes solely occupy the inspired narrator, though Isaac had still sixty-three years to live. (See Note on Gen_11:27.)

A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

And Jacob went out from Beersheba,.... Where Isaac and Rebekah now lived: from hence he went alone, without any servants to attend him, though perhaps not without letters of recommendation from his parents, testifying their affection to him, and that he came with their knowledge and consent, and was their heir, as Isaac had been to Abraham; nor without provisions, at least not without money to purchase them by the way, as appears by the oil he had, Gen 28:18,

and went toward Haran: for thither he could not get in one day, being many days' journey; See Gill on Gen 28:5.

John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

It is not strange that Jacob went alone, as it appears that he did from Gen 32:10, when his grandfather’s servant was attended with a so great retinue, Gen 24:1-67, because attendance was then necessary to procure him reputation, and to obtain the consent of the virgin and her parents to long a journey; but here, as it was unnecessary, so it would have been troublesome and prejudicial, exposing him both to the envy and snares of his brother Esau, which by this private departure he did avoid. Besides, God in his wise providence did so order this, and some other matters of the like nature, for the greater illustration of his care and kindness towards his children. Add to this the great simplicity, humility, and innocency of those times, if compared with ours, which made many things then usual which now would be ridiculous.

Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

Jacob's Dream at Bethel. - As he was travelling from Beersheba, where Isaac was then staying (Gen 26:25), to Haran, Jacob came to a place where he was obliged to stop all night, because the sun had set. The words "he hit (lighted) upon the place," indicate the apparently accidental, yet really divinely appointed choice of this place for his night-quarters; and the definite article points it out as having become well known through the revelation of God that ensued. After making a pillow with the stones (מאשׁת, head-place, pillow), he fell asleep and had a dream, in which he saw a ladder resting upon the earth, with the top reaching to heaven; and upon it angels of God going up and down, and Jehovah Himself standing above it. The ladder was a visible symbol of the real and uninterrupted fellowship between God in heaven and His people upon earth. The angels upon it carry up the wants of men to God, and bring down the assistance and protection of God to men. The ladder stood there upon the earth, just where Jacob was lying in solitude, poor, helpless, and forsaken by men. Above in heaven stood Jehovah, and explained in words the symbol which he saw. Proclaiming Himself to Jacob as the God of his fathers, He not only confirmed to him all the promises of the fathers in their fullest extent, but promised him protection on his journey and a safe return to his home (Gen 28:13-15). But as the fulfilment of this promise to Jacob was still far off, God added the firm assurance, "I will not leave thee till I have done (carried out) what I have told thee."

Keil & Delitzsch — Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament (1861–1891) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API. (Old Testament only.)

And Jacob went out

Bethel becomes, because of Jacob’s vision there, one of the significant places of Scripture. To the Christian it stands for a realization, however imperfect, of the heavenly and spiritual contents of faith, answering to Paul’s prayer in Eph 1:17-23. Dispensationally, the scene speaks of Israel the nation, cast out of the Land of Promise because of evil-doing there, but holding the promise of restoration and blessing; Gen 28:15; Deu 30:1-10. To "an Israelite indeed" Christ speaks of Jacob’s vision as to be fulfilled in the Son of man (cf); Gen 28:12; Joh 1:47-51.

The Scofield Reference Bible (1917 edition), notes by C. I. Scofield — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Jacob’s Dream at Bethel

v. 10. And Jacob went out from Beersheba, in the extreme southern part of Canaan, where Isaac then had his camp, and went toward Haran, traveling first toward the north.

v. 11. And he lighted upon a certain place, he apparently struck this place by chance, although it was a matter of God’s guidance, 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. The place where this occurred is designated even here in such a manner as to draw attention to its later importance.

v. 12. 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.

v. 13. 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;

v. 14. 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. This was a wonderful revelation of God, together with a confirmation of the Messianic promise given through the mouth of Isaac. The entire picture shows the uninterrupted communication, the intimate communion between God and the believers on earth. The angels of God accompany the believers and protect them in all their ways, and represent them in their difficulties and tribulations, bringing God’s help and protection down from heaven in return. The ladder stood on the earth, where Jacob lay, apparently all alone and forsaken, with not a foot of ground to call his own, but at its top stood the almighty God, whose promises never fail. It was in one of his first speeches that Jesus referred to this vision of Jacob, Joh 1:51. In the person of Jesus Christ heaven and earth, God and man, are united in a singular and most marvelous manner, and through Christ, the incarnate Son of God, we enter into communion with God.

v. 15. And, behold, I am with thee, and will keep thee in all places whither thou goest, and will bring thee again in to this land; for I will not leave thee, until I have done that which I have spoken to thee of. In addition to the Messianic promise, which ever afterward was the greatest comfort of Jacob, just as it is the hope of all believers, the Lord gave him an assurance concerning his own personal welfare on his journeys. Jacob was able to rely upon the definite, infallible fulfillment of the Lord’s promises, which are just as certain today as they were then and therefore require the same unquestioning acceptance.

Paul E. Kretzmann, Popular Commentary of the Bible (1921–1924) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

General Information:

The story switches back to Jacob

He came to a certain place and stayed there all night, because the sun had set

"He came to a certain place and, because the sun had set, he decided to stay for the night"

translationWords

Beersheba

Haran

unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.

ויצא יעקב AND JACOB WENT OUT— Owing to the fact that it was because the daughters of Canaan were evil in the eyes of Isaac, his father, that Esau went to Ishmael, Scripture broke off the narrative contained, in the section dealing with Jacob, and wrote (verse 6 till verse 9), “Now Esau saw that Isaac had blessed [Jacob] etc., that the daughters of Canaan were evil in the eyes of Isaac and so he went to Ishmael” and when it finished this (the account of Esau’s further marriage) it resumes the previous subject.

ויצא [AND JACOB] WENT OUT—It need have written simply “And Jacob went to Haran’’; why then does it mention his departure from Beersheba? But it intends to tell us that the departure of a righteous person from his city makes an impression. As long as a righteous man is in his city he is its glory and splendour and beauty; when he leaves it, there depart also its glory, its splendour and its beauty. This, too, is the meaning of (Ruth 1:7) “And she went forth out of the place”, stated in reference to Naomi and Ruth (Genesis Rabbah 68:6).

וילך חרנה means he went out TO GO TO HARAN.

Rashi on the Tanakh — English translations: “The Judaica Press complete Tanach with Rashi, translated by A. J. Rosenberg” (CC BY 4.0); “Pentateuch with Rashi's commentary by M. Rosenbaum and A.M. Silbermann, 1929-1934” (public domain); “The Metsudah Tanach series, Lakewood, N.J” (CC BY 4.0); and “The Book of Joshua, Metsudah Publications, 1997” (CC BY 4.0). Text via Sefaria.

ויצא יעקב מבאר שבע וילך חרנה, it is the custom of Scriptures to first tell us the beginning and the end of something before elaborating on what occurred in the interval. Other examples of this literary style of the Scriptures are found in Genesis 24,10 ויקם וילך אל ארם נהרים, something that did not all occur on the same day. Similarly, we find the phrase צמח בלי יעשה קמח, “it grew without developing into flour,” without mentioning all the intermediary stages before relating the outcome. (Hoseah 8,7) The reason we have such formulations is because the author hastens to get to the point of the story.

Radak on the Tanakh — English translations: “Sefaria Community Translation” (CC0 1.0 (public-domain dedication)); “Eliyahu Munk, HaChut Hameshulash” (CC BY 4.0); “Rabbi Mike Feuer, Jerusalem Anthology” (CC BY 4.0); and “R. David Kimhi on the first book of Psalms, Translated by R.G. Finch, London, 1919” (public domain). Text via Sefaria.