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| Jacob's Dream by Jusepe de Ribera |
This is the second in a series: Stories from Exile. You can read part one here.
The biblical texts are full of stories featuring people who leave home for one reason or another and find themselves in an in-between place. The entire saga of Abraham and Sarah is underscored by a sense of un-belonging. The history of Israel is filled with tales situated in liminal spaces. People are running from danger, travelling to find a wife, searching for livestock, going to war, passing through a foreign land, or wandering in the wilderness.
One of these in-between stories is found in Genesis 28. Barbara Brown Taylor summarizes the familiar tale:
There he was, still a young man, running away from home because the whole screwy family had finally imploded. His father was dying. He and his twin brother, Esau, had both wanted their father’s blessing. Jacob’s mother had colluded with him to get it, and though his scheme worked, it enraged his brother to the point that Jacob fled for his life. He and his brother were not identical twins. Esau could have squashed him like a bug. So Jacob left with little more than the clothes on his back, and when he had walked as far as he could, he looked around for a stone he could use for a pillow.
When he had
found one the right size, Jacob lay down to sleep, turning his cheek against
the stone that was still warm from the sun. Maybe the dream was in the stone,
or maybe it fell out of the sky. Wherever the dream came from, it was vivid: a
ladder set up on the earth, with the top of it reaching to heaven and the
angels of God ascending and descending it like bright-winged ants. Then, all of
a sudden, God said to him, “I will not leave you until I have done what I have
promised you.”
Jacob woke while God’s breath was still stirring the air, although he saw nothing out of the ordinary around him: same wilderness, same rocks, same sand. If someone had held a mirror in front of his face, Jacob would not have seen anything different there either, except for the circles of surprise in his eyes. “Surely the Lord is in this place,” he said out loud, “ – and I did not know it!” Shaken by what he had seen, he could not seem to stop talking. “How awesome is this place!” he went on. “This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.” [1]
We pick up the story in Genesis 28:18: “After Jacob got up early in the morning, he took the stone that he had put near his head, set it up as a sacred pillar, and poured oil on the top of it. He named that sacred place Bethel [God’s House], though Luz was the city’s original name. Jacob made a solemn promise: 'If God is with me and protects me on this trip I’m taking, and gives me bread to eat and clothes to wear, and I return safely to my father’s household, then the Lord will be my God.'" (Genesis 28:18-21, CEB)
What do we notice about Jacob? He is alone, running away from bad choices and trying to hang onto stolen blessings. He is vulnerable in this wilderness place located somewhere between the danger of an angry brother and the presumed safety of his mother's relatives. Jacob's dream is a reassuring message from God, a promise that God will not leave him until the divine promises and blessings are fulfilled. Jacob is not quick to return the confidence. He makes a conditional offer of loyalty to God, contingent on his safe journey and eventual return to his family. Robert Alter observes: “God has already promised him in the dream that He will do all these things for him. Jacob, however, remains the suspicious bargainer – a ‘wrestler’ with words and condition just as he is a physical wrestler, a heel-grabber.” [2]
What do we notice about God? This is a God who shows up in deserted, liminal places. This is a God who reaffirms divine presence, promise, and faithfulness, even to those who have not acted in good faith. This is a God who comforts those living in uncertainty. The connection between the heavenly realm and the earthly realm is represented as constant, characterized by movement. The messengers of God are both ascending and descending, implying that communication flows steadily both ways. God hears and God speaks.
Robert Alter observes that Jacob is represented as a “border crosser, a man of liminal experiences.” [3] Jacob's dream speaks to more than just this one escape from danger. It speaks to him as a man constantly between places, between family members, between loyalties, and even between cultures. The dream is a message of reassurance not only for this particular night but for all the other precarious places which he will occupy.
When God is revealed as being closer than ever in an unexpected, in-between place, Jacob is surprised at the incongruence. He has just bet his future well-being on God being present in a particular way and in a particular place: the birthright of the first-born, the laying on of hands, the ritual meal, the words of a patriarch's blessing. But God shows up outside the ritual, outside the weighty words, outside the conventional setting.
Jacob’s dream communicates that YHWH is present and accessible in all the border places in which he will find himself. To a man always seeking to have the upper hand, yet finding himself time and again in perilous places of uncertainty, the dream tells him that in every place, whether it is up or down or in-between, YHWH is present and attentive and active. This is the God of the in-between, the God of those not quite at home in life, not quite at peace with circumstances or people. This is the God of uncertain places, the places where we do not know how things will turn out. In the precarious places, we find Beth-el, the house of God.
These are unsettling days. We cannot map the future regarding collective health and well-being and the political climate is unstable in many ways. This story reminds us that God's reassuring, faithful presence is in the in-between places of life. God can be found in surprising locations like the trees standing tall in the forest or the delivery person walking down the sidewalk or the line-up at the grocery store or the geese flying overhead or the construction worksite or the rocks in the park or the online meeting.
When we pause and notice the divine presence in unexpected places, we can exclaim with the God-wrestler: "God lives here! ... I've stumbled into God's home!" [4]
We are at home with God, even in places of exile.
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1. Barbara Brown Taylor, An Altar in the World (New York: HarperOne, 2009), 2-3.
2. Robert Alter, The Five Books of Moses (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2019), 101.
3. Ibid., 100.
4. Genesis 28:16, The Living Bible.
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