12.7.24 ~ The Ladder

Good morning!

What has become a wonderful Sunday School story for children has more life lessons than you can shake a stick at! In this week's Torah portion, vayetze/and he left, we find the story of 'Jacob's Ladder' (Gen. 28:10-22). Which leads me to ask a question: What does Jacob's ladder, the Tower of Babel, Yeshua, my imitating life of Him, and Jacob's journey back home all have in common?

Commercial: Zoom call from last night: Connecting Heaven and Earth - Vayetze/and he left: the process of becoming the ladder or is it possible for me to connect heaven and earth in the presence of those around me?

As Jacob leaves his home to find a bride, he has an encounter with a specific place, known as Luz, where he prepares his bed and has an amazing dream of a ladder, with its feet planted on the ground, and its top reaching into the heavens. Angels are going up and down the ladder.

In his dream, God declared to Jacob that He will give him this land, the land Jacob is resting upon, right now. He’s going to give this land to him and to his children – and those children are going to be numerous; they're going to be like the dust of the earth.

The question for enquiring minds is, "what's up with the ladder in the dream"? And that question takes us back to another story in the Torah where there is a structure that has its feet on the earth and reaches to the heavens; the tower of Babel (Gen. 11).

Let's review where we've been in last week's study. Here is Jacob; his father, Isaac, has just blessed him and said goodbye to him. Jacob, of course, is trying to run away from his brother, Esau, who he has just deceived. And so:

Jacob goes and leaves Be’er Sheva, and he goes. heads off toward the land of Charanin, leaving the Land of Canaan. And all of a sudden he meets up with a place (Gen. 28:10,11).

He falls asleep and in that place has a dream, a dream of angels going up and down a ladder. Jacob names the place after the vision, calling it the House of God/beit el...20 years later...there’s another story just like this, and it happens in just a few chapters from here (Gen. 32).

At the end of Vayetze, Jacob is again on the road – except this time in reverse direction. He is going from Haran back to the Land of Canaan. At the beginning of Vayetze, Jacob was leaving his father’s house. And now, at the end of Vayetze, he is leaving Laban, his father-in-law’s house. The opening part of the journey has a father blessing and kissing his child goodbye and at the end we have the same thing with the father-in-law kissing his children goodbye and blessing them. Jacob then exits stage left and...

And Jacob went on his way, and angels of God encountered him…and he names the place 'camps/mahanaim (Gen. 32:1,2)

The stories are so similar, yet different. In the first story, he doesn’t encounter the angels directly. He actually sleeps while the angels go up and down the ladder. He is an observer. But at the end, he and the angels are moving towards one another, on the same plane. And Jacob doesn’t just encounter the place; he encounters the angels themselves, directly. Hmmm.  What has changed over the past 20 years? Why are things different now? Earlier I mentioned the Tower of Babel (Gen. 11), where, under Nimrod's leadership, the builders of the tower, they say:

"Come, let’s build a city and a tower, with its head in heaven, and let’s make a name for ourselves" (Gen. 11:4).

So could these two structures have anything to do with each other? Upon further investigation, we would find the similarities between the two structures are amazing. But, one is rejected and the other fully accepted. Which makes us ask another question: "What was the purpose of each structure"?

The tower was designed to help humans make the leap to God’s realm. Through the Tower, people actually sought to build a name for themselves. Which means, even if they scatter and even if their civilization suddenly disappears, still, the tower that they have built, inasmuch as it pierces the heavens, it’s a great monument to them as a civilization. It’s going to be their legacy.

So, could the ladder, which was accepted, have had an inverse purpose to that? God’s domain is in the heavens – but this ladder, it is a bridge between worlds...(Matt. 6:10)? Could its intent be to somehow help God ‘make a name for Himself’, as it were – to establish some sort of legacy for Himself, in our world? Enquiring minds want to know!

And the answer to that might lie in the message that Jacob receives from God in the dream. While he’s looking at the Ladder, God had told Jacob that his children would become a nation, like the dust of the earth, and collectively, they would come to possess the Land of Canaan. This nation, however, isn’t just a blind fact. It has a purpose, a reason for being. The reason the nation exists is to become the ladder.

It will be a vehicle for bringing God’s Name into the world – our world – for leaving a Divine mark upon this very physical world. How? Through a group of individuals imitating The Ladder (Jn. 1:50,51; 1 Cor. 11:1; Eph. 5:1,2), during the process of their own lekh lekha journey in relationship to the Bride.

In our story, Jacob begins to become the ladder. How? Not just because he’s becoming a nation, but because he is actualizing, in his life and the life of his family, something that the nation needs to actually stand for. He is beginning to bring Godly values from heaven, as it were, down into this world, he’s beginning to make them a reality in this terrestrial sphere of ours. No longer is he asleep on the floor as angels ascend to heaven in a mere dream. No, the dream has started to become real: The ladder isn’t imagined anymore. Jacob is becoming the ladder, in ‘real-life.’ And so of course, the angels, whose whole goal is to get to the ladder, to ascend and descend on it, those angels are meeting him now, head on, eye to eye.

What does it mean to say he has become a ladder, in real life? Well, the ladder is a conduit – a way the Divine could connect to the earth. And how does the Divine connect to the earth? The answer is: through human action. Jacob has begun to make his dream become reality. And in doing so, with his feet planted firmly on the ground, he has begun to pierce the heavens.

May we do the same!

Shabbat Shalom!

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