Genesis 28:11
He took of the stones of that place
The only physical object in the scene is picked up for comfort, not for worship. Everything else in it is a dream.
Objects of the Bible
The ladder at Bethel
Set up on the earth and reaching to heaven, with traffic going both ways.
It is seen once, in a dream, by a man using a stone for a pillow. The description is exact and strange: a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven, and behold the angels of God ascending and descending on it. The order of those two verbs is worth noticing. They go up first, which means they were already here before the dream started.
Scroll down to the story
The movements, in the order the text gives them.
The story of The ladder at Bethel
- 01
- 02
Genesis 28:12
Ascending and descending on it
The angels go up before they come down. The commerce was already running through a place the man on the ground thought was empty.
- 03
Genesis 28:17
The gate of heaven
His reading of the object is architectural: a house and a gate. Fear, not comfort, is the recorded response.
- 04
Genesis 28:18-19
He poured oil upon the top of it
The pillow becomes a pillar. It is the first stone in the Bible anointed to mark a place rather than to build with.
- 05
John 1:51
Upon the Son of man
The image returns unchanged except in one detail, and the change of that detail is the whole of the New Testament’s claim.
Why it matters
The object is not really a ladder, it is a statement about where the traffic runs, and Jacob reads it that way on waking: this is none other but the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven. What he does next is turn the pillow into a pillar and pour oil on it, which is the first anointed stone in Scripture. And the image is picked up once more at the end. Jesus tells Nathanael he will see heaven open and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of man, which puts a person where the ladder stood.
3 songs
The music
Every song in the catalogue whose passage falls inside these chapters.
