Genesis 28:10-19a Commentary

Genesis 28 comes on the heels of Jacob stealing his older brother’s birthright or legitimately buying it in trade for a bowl of stew, depending on who is telling the story.  What we will see play out in later chapters is, indeed, the younger brother receiving the blessing historically passed down to the first-born.  This is not an unusual trope in the book of Genesis and it tells us something about God. All the way back to God preferring Abel’s sacrifice to Cain’s, God has made unlikely choices. God chooses Isaac, not Ishmael. God chooses Jacob, not Esau. Jacob chooses to dote on Joseph and, later, on Benjamin but God chooses Judah, not first-born Reuben for the line that will lead to leadership and, ultimately, to the Messiah.

Who God chooses is a hugely important topic theologically and geo-politically.  Think how many wars have been fought and injustices perpetrated along these lines.  The Protestants in Northern Ireland called themselves the “Ulster” (meaning covenant) party.  In South Africa, the annual celebration of Afrikaner nationalism was called Covenant Day.  Right now, support for the United States’ partnership with Israel and war against Iran is at least partially contingent on who we believe to be “God’s chosen people.”  So it is really important to think about how Christians conceive of God’s choosing. I’m looking at my fellow Calvinists here, especially.  Think of all the flawed leaders God has chosen: Moses, David…well, all the Biblical leaders before and after Jesus. From the very beginning, God has not chosen according to human conventions.  And from the beginning of the covenant, God’s choosing has not been for the purpose of circling the wagons, keeping the riff-raff out, keeping the holy people safe.  God’s choosing has always involved a sending and the explicit promise that “all nations will be blessed through you.” These Genesis stories of God’s unlikely choosing are an excellent —and unexpected–place to do some groundwork in terms of people’s social imaginations and political discipleship.

Commentary:

Jacob, the Dreamer

Of course, in the Genesis narrative (and especially thanks to the musical Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dream Coat) Joseph is the well-known dreamer.  His dreams set him against his brothers in Canaan and they save his life in Egypt.  But this text is the first such “dream sequence” given to a patriarch, making Jacob the OG Dreamer.

According to Biblical scholar Bill Arnold, dreams in the ancient near-eastern world did two things. “Dreams in antiquity were routinely regarded as portents revealing future events, but they were occasionally also a means of seeing into other worlds.” In Jacob’s case we surmise the dream is more of the latter motif.  Again from Arnold, “the effect is a sense of divine imminence, of God’s presence with Jacob in the unnamed place. He is not alone after all, but simply unaware of the divine highway connecting the stone where he sleeps on the ground and the celestial realms above.”

Climbing the Ladder

The word for the apparatus the angels are climbing has frequently been translated “ladder.” At the very least, that’s what the publisher of my childhood Sunday School materials seems to think the word meant based on the pictures I was given to color in. To be fair, the Hebrew word that appears here is unique in Scripture.  It doesn’t seem to be a vocabulary word borrowed from a near linguistic neighbor either.  The best case, according to Bill Arnold, is that it is an Akkadian word for “staircase,” a prominent feature in Babylonian religious structures.  Arnold describes it as “an allusion to the dominant feature of temple complexes in ancient Mesopotamia, the ziggurat, or stepped tower of three to seven stages. Such stepped pyramids were central to religious conceptions in ancient Babylonia.”  Temples, like these, were seen as the intermediary space between heaven and earth, lending an additional credence to the theory that this dream is not a revelation of future happenings but a pulling aside of the veil between heaven and earth.

Robert Alter agrees that this ziggurat image is likely the best translation for the string word “and so the structure envisioned is probably a vast ramp with terraced landings.”  Alter goes further “There is a certain appropriateness in the Mesopotamian motif, given the destination of Jacob’s journey. Jacob in general is represented as a border crosser, a man of liminal experiences.” Give Jacob’s nomadic life, he will need the promises and presence of a God who can not only keep up but go out ahead of him.

God on the Move

According to Arnold, “Yahweh presents himself in this dream, pulling back the curtain on his majesty, allowing himself to be presented in theophanic certainty.”  In a unique approach, this theophany is not only an attention grabbing device but is, itself, a kind of theatrical production, a revelation. On top of it, God speaks, reinforcing God’s covenant promises. As they were for Abraham, so they will be for Jacob as well. In terms of covenant, note especially the reiteration that “All people on earth will be blessed through you and your offspring” (v. 14.) So, says Arnold, “The covenant promises, which may now be called the promises of the fathers, are being explained to a new generation and promised afresh to the rightful heir.”

God’s promise to be with Jacob is critical in this case because it means that God will not be bounded. God promised to lead Abraham to the land. But Isaac was destined to wander and, now, Jacob too.  This is a clear distinction and improvement over the gods of Israel’s neighbors who were often bounded by geography or speciality (god of the sea, god of the sky, etc.). However, Yahweh God is portable.  Since Jacob is, here, on the move, “he needs assurances that Yahweh is not a deity restricted to any particular locale. This God will be with Jacob whether at home in Beer-sheba, on the road at a rocky overnight rest stop, or all the way to Paddan-Aram.”