Or, God’s Presence and Promise in Exile
Scripture: Genesis 28:10-22
Date: October 16, 2016
Speaker: Sean Higgins
Having a “special place” could be a silly thing, a spot that produces sentimental feeling and provides justification for discontentment and being a jerk to others if they keep you from getting to it whenever you want. A special place could be where you go to be godly with ungodly motivations, such as lusting for the perfect Instagram quiet time backdrop. As long as the lighting is right and the chai tea cup full, the open Bible looks great; reading it is fondant.
Some of the problem could be the word “special.” We’ve gotten to the point where too much that is special is special, precious, pretentious.
And yet, because we are creatures of time and space, there are special occasions and locations. They need not become idols, but they can be received as gifts from God and enjoyed with thankfulness to Him. Some special places are so called because that’s where we first fellowshipped with God or where we frequently meet with Him. He is omnipresent, so we can fellowship with Him wherever we are, but some spots are different from what is usual.
Such a place became special to Jacob though he could not have known it ahead of time. Unlike taking advantage of his brother or deceiving his dad to get what he wanted, Jacob didn’t cook up a scam to position himself for this encounter. The blessing that he gets in this place didn’t come from his scheming but from God’s grace.
Moses is the one who emphasizes the place: “a certain place,” stones “of the place,” “in that place” (16), “how awesome is this place” (17). Jacob named “the place” (19). This is a special place, one that Jacob will return to, one that he never forgot.
There are two things that happen here. We could outline it by what happened at night (verses 10-17) and what happened in the morning (verses 18-22), but I prefer to consider God’s Revelation (verses 10-15) and Jacob’s Response (verses 16-22).
This is a traveler’s story, or more specifically, a fugitive’s story, since Jacob is running for his life. He stole his brother’s blessing and Esau comforted himself by rehearsing plans to kill Jacob. Rebekah heard it and, with her own ultimatum about who Jacob needed to marry, persuaded Isaac to send Jacob away with his blessing. It seems that’s all he sent Jacob with; no servants or supplies are mentioned.
Jacob left Beersheba and went toward Haran. This homebody (Genesis 25:27) left home and family in Beersheba to go toward where Rebekah’s family lived. The distance was between 500 and 600 miles, so it would have taken Jacob more than a month to get there. We’re only told about one night for the whole journey.
And he came to a certain place and stayed there that night, because the sun had set. This wasn’t a planned stop, he stopped because he didn’t have enough daylight to see where he was going. And there weren’t any accommodations. Taking one of the stones of that place, he put it under his head and lay down in that place to sleep. He was under the stars, not in a house or even a tent, apparently not near a city where he could have asked to spend the night more comfortably. As for the stone, it seems that he used it as a sort of pillow. Maybe he was trying to keep his spine straight.
This may be the most famous dream in the Bible, at least to have an ’70’s rock band sing about (thanks, Led Zeppelin). This is Jacob’s ladder, the stairway to heaven.
And he dreamed, and behold, there was a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven. And behold, the angels of God were ascending and descending on it! And behold, the LORD stood above it (Genesis 28:12–13a)
Jacob has a vision of a ladder as the ESV translates (as well as the KJV and NASB), but notes it could be a “flight of steps” or a staircase. The Hebrew word is only used here in the entire Old Testament, and steps of some kind seem more appropriate if the angels are ascending and descending on it at the same time. That seems harder to do on rungs of a ladder as we think of.
We might also wonder, why are they coming and going? And maybe even more than that, why do they need stairs? There isn’t any other explanation that they need apparatus to go back and forth.
As for ascending and descending, “perhaps the ascending angels are those responsible for Jacob’s homeland and descending ones are those responsible for the foreign land to which he is going. In other words, this vision of the angels is an assurance of God’s protection of Jacob even though he is leaving home” (Wehnam). But if angels are responsible for particular territories, why does it matter where Jacob is?
As for the stairway, this is why the place is so special. It is the place where God meets Jacob. Behold, the LORD stood above it, or perhaps more likely, the LORD stood “by” it or even “beside him,” on earth with Jacob.
More important than the stairway and the vision of angels is the word of the Lord.
“I am the LORD, the God of Abraham your father and the God of Isaac. The land on which you lie I will give to you and to your offspring. Your offspring shall be like the dust of the earth, and you shall spread abroad to the west and to the east and to the north and to the south, and in you and your offspring shall all the families of the earth be blessed. Behold, I am with you and will keep you wherever you go, and will bring you back to this land. For I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.” (Genesis 28:13–15)
What might Jacob have expected God to say at this point? Was Jacob surprised not to be rebuked? That the LORD does not reprove Jacob does not mean the LORD approved of Jacob’s lies. It means that there is more than one way to humble a sinner.
Yahweh’s self-identification is personal, and disconcerting. He is the God of Abraham your father and the God of Isaac. With your father after Abraham, God connects Jacob back to the original covenanter. With the God of Isaac, God reassures Jacob that his father’s blessing was legit. But, would God now judge Jacob for how he deceived the one chosen by God?
There is no confrontation, even if Jacob still fears. From the LORD there is confirmation. As Jacob flees for his life, only stopping because it was too dark to continue, God said the land on which you lie I will give to you and to your offspring. Both covenantal pieces are included: land and offspring. Jacob heard it from Isaac (Genesis 28:3-4). Now he hears it directly from the God of Isaac. The offspring will be like the dust of the earth. Their boundaries will extend in every direction and then the covenant kicker, in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed. His own family will be prosperous, but their family is given to be a “fountain” (Calvin) for the life of the world.
How would Jacob know this? How could he put together leaving the land that the LORD was promising him? Behold, I am with you and will keep you wherever you go, and will bring you back to this land. For I will not leave you until I have done what I promised you. Note Yahweh’s initiative: “I am with you,” “I will keep you,” “I will bring you back,” “I will not leave you,” “I have done,” “I promised.” Jacob was not alone. He would not go into exile to fend for himself. He did have to go, God wasn’t eliminating the journey, a journey we find out takes twenty-plus years, including sleepless and cold nights, family betrayals and bitterness. But God will give him a family, God will guard him, and God will bring him back.
He sought none of this. He didn’t have any idea that this is where God would be found. The LORD sought Jacob, and by grace the LORD wouldn’t leave him.
Jacob does not get wrapped up in what was promised to him but rather Who made the promises.
Still in the middle of the night, Jacob awoke from his sleep. He is both exhilarated and fearful. He said, “Surely the LORD is in this place, and I did not know it!” Jacob wasn’t denying the doctrine of God’s omnipresence, he was recognizing that the revelation came in an unexpected, out of the way place.
The dream unsettled him. And he was afraid and said, “How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.” When the LORD reveals Himself to men, they are usually overwhelmed. Awesome could be translated “dreadful” (KJV) or “fearful” (LXX) or “intimidating”; it was a grave place. Whatever men think they know about God, they are undone in His presence.
Jacob calls the place Bethel which means “house of God.” Here is God’s dwelling place. The gate of heaven is interesting since the tower of Babel was built to get to heaven. Men can’t reach God, but He does come down to them.
Early in the morning Jacob took the stone that he had put under his head and set it up for a pillar and poured oil on the top of it. Later, the Israelites were prohibited from putting up pillars such as this, and they were also required to tear down the Canaanite pillars when they entered the land.
Jacob is not worshipping the pillar as an idol, he is consecrating it, anointing it with oil as a future memorial for himself and for others that this is a special place.
He called the name of that place Bethel, the “house of God.” Later Israelites are caught worshipping false gods in Bethel (for example, Jeroboam in 1 Kings 12-13). The name of the city was Luz at the first, but this was to locate the place for future readers. When Jacob was there, there was no city.
Vows are promises to God usually made during a crisis. “Vows are not contracts or limited agreements, but yieldings that reorient life” (Brueggemann quoted by Waltke). If God helps, then the vower will give thanks back in a particular way. Jacob’s vow could be read in a way where he’s basing whether or not to serve God on whether or not God fulfills His promises.
It’s better to understand the vow as one of faith. Jacob had already responded in praise, he wasn’t pulling back from it now. Jacob recognized that God’s promise will mark him as God’s man. He believes, by repeating what the LORD said, that God will be with me and will keep me in this way that I go and will provide and make it so that I come again to my father’s house in peace. If all that happens, and he trusts that it will, then the covenant between them will be obvious and Jacob will worship God in that exact place and offer a tithe of his possessions. Jacob does just that in Genesis 35:1-15.
In addition to seeing God’s eternal story of redemption step forward on the timeline, we see that God moves forward by grace. God chose Jacob before he was born, before he (or Esau) had done anything good or bad. In fact, once out of the womb, we know more about the bad, questionable behavior of Jacob than anything good he did. Even Esau tried something to appease his dad when he realized that he was out of favor.
Jacob is on the run, with a word from his father, but nothing else to show for it. He was out of plans, out of schemes and away from everything he’d known in his life for 77 years. That is the place where God met him. That is the kind of place that grace finds us.
Jacob isn’t finished maturing, but his trajectory isn’t the same after this place. We also may still have difficult decades ahead, maybe even as a result of our own sin, but God goes with His people in every place.