A Promise in an Unexpected Place

Three verbs, called, blessed and charged, and the first words are a prohibition. Isaac takes up Rebekah’s complaint from 27:46 but widens “daughters of Heth” to “daughters of Canaan”, the words Abraham used when he sent his servant in 24:3.

Isaac sends Jacob to “the house of Bethuel”, though it is Laban who runs it. Abraham sent a servant with ten camels to fetch Isaac’s wife; Jacob goes himself, and apparently with nothing, since he later says “with my staff I passed over this Jordan” (32:10).

“God Almighty” is El Shaddai, the name God gave himself to Abram in 17:1, and its meaning is still debated. “A multitude of people” is qehal ammim, an assembly of peoples; qahal becomes the word for Israel’s gathered congregation, and the Greek renders it synagoge.

“The blessing of Abraham” is the phrase Paul takes up in Galatians 3:14. “The land wherein thou art a stranger” is literally “the land of thy sojournings”, megurim, a phrase used of Abraham in 17:8 and of Jacob again in 37:1: the family lives in its promised land as resident aliens.

Rebekah is called “Jacob’s and Esau’s mother”, with the younger son named first. Rashi, who comments on almost every word, says here only “I do not know what this teaches us”, and the phrase has become famous for its honesty.

Verses 6 to 9 are one long sentence seen through Esau’s eyes: when Esau saw, and that Jacob obeyed, and Esau seeing, then went Esau. He learns the content of a charge given to someone else, as his mother learned of the blessing by listening in chapter 27.

“Obeyed his father and his mother” is the pairing Deuteronomy 21:18 uses of the rebellious son who “will not obey the voice of his father, or the voice of his mother”. Jacob is described as the obedient son at the moment he leaves home.

“Pleased not” is literally “were evil in the eyes of Isaac his father”. Genesis said in 26:35 that the marriages grieved both parents, but Esau registers only his father’s view. It seems to be the first time he has noticed.

Mahalath is Ishmael’s daughter, and in 36:3 she seems to be called Bashemath. On the rabbis’ reckoning, with Jacob sixty-three here, Ishmael would have been a hundred thirty-seven, the year of his death in 25:17. So she is named by her brother Nebajoth, as Rebekah was introduced alongside Laban.

From Beersheba to Haran is roughly five hundred miles, a month or more on foot. The verse gives the whole journey in two verbs, went out and went toward, before stopping on one night near the start of it.

“Lighted upon” is paga, to meet or come upon, and it returns when Jacob comes home: “the angels of God met him” (32:1), the same verb. “Place”, maqom, comes three times in this verse. Later Jewish tradition used HaMaqom, the Place, as a name for God.

“Set up” is mutsav, from the root natsav, to stand. The LORD “stood” in the next verse is nitsav, and the pillar of verse 18 is matsevah, so the same root runs through ladder, God and stone. Rashi pictured the angels who had kept him in the land going up and others coming down to go with him.

“Stood above it” can equally be read “stood beside him”, since the Hebrew alav means over or by either the ladder or Jacob. God calls Abraham Jacob’s “father”, the word covering a grandfather or any forebear, and names himself by both generations before promising the ground Jacob is lying on.

“Spread abroad” is parats, to break out, the verb of Perez’s name in 38:29 and of Jacob’s own wealth when he “increased exceedingly” in 30:43. The directions start with the west, yammah, seaward, since Hebrew faces east and the sea is behind. Dust recalls the promise to Abraham in 13:16.

“Keep” is shamar, the verb of Psalm 121:8, “The LORD shall preserve thy going out and thy coming in”, and of the priestly blessing in Numbers 6:24. “Until I have done” does not mean God will leave afterward; it means he will not stop short of it.

“Surely” is akhen, a word of sudden realisation, the one Moses uses in Exodus 2:14 when he finds his killing is known: “Surely this thing is known.” Jacob speaks of “the LORD” by name, the God of his father who has just spoken to him in his own words.

The ladder whose “top of it reached to heaven” (verse 12) uses the words of the tower of Babel, “whose top may reach unto heaven” (11:4). Babylon’s own name, Bab-ili, meant gate of god. At Babel men tried to build the gate; here Jacob finds it where he happened to sleep.

The Hebrew does not say “pillows” but “at his head”, meraashotav, the stone set by his head. A standing stone, matsevah, was later forbidden to Israel (Deuteronomy 16:22) because the Canaanites used them in worship. This is the first time in Scripture anything is anointed with oil.

Luz means almond tree. The name survives in Judges 1:23–26, where a man of Luz who shows Israel the way into the city goes off and founds a second Luz in the land of the Hittites. Beth-el means house of God, exactly Jacob’s words in verse 17.

This is the first vow recorded in the Bible. Its conditions repeat the promise of verse 15 nearly clause by clause, be with me, keep me, in this way: Jacob asks for what he has just been promised, adding only bread and raiment.

“In peace” is be-shalom, whole and safe. When he returns, 33:18 says he “came to Shalem, a city of Shechem”; many translators render that word as “safely”, the vow fulfilled. Where Jacob’s “then” begins is disputed: the King James starts it here, while other translations keep this line in the condition and start at verse 22.

“I will surely give the tenth” doubles the verb, a tithe I will tithe. Abraham gave Melchizedek a tenth of the spoil in 14:20; Jacob promises one of all he will ever have. When he returns to Bethel in chapter 35 he builds an altar, and no tithe is recorded.