Genesis 28:10-12
He lighted upon a certain place
Nothing marks it out. He stops because the sun set, not because the place was known, and the stone is a pillow before it is an altar.
Places of the Bible
Bethel
A man sleeping on a stone in open country woke up and said God was here and he had not known it.
Also called Luz, before Jacob renamed it
It is a place before it is a name. Jacob is running from his brother with nothing, lights on a certain place because the sun is set, takes of the stones of that place for a pillow, and lies down. The dream is a ladder set up on the earth with its top reaching to heaven, and the angels of God ascending and descending on it, and the LORD standing above it repeating to him the promise made to Abraham and Isaac.
Scroll down to the story
The movements, in the order the text gives them.
The story of Bethel
- 01
- 02
Genesis 28:13-15
I am with thee, and will keep thee
The promise given to Abraham is repeated over a man with nothing, running away, with a clause added about coming back.
- 03
Genesis 28:16-19
Surely the LORD is in this place
He wakes afraid, not comforted. This is none other but the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.
- 04
Genesis 28:20-22
If God will be with me
The vow is conditional and specific, down to bread to eat and raiment to put on, and it ends with a tenth.
- 05
Genesis 35:1-7
Put away the strange gods
Told to return and build the altar, he cleans the household out first. Earrings and idols go under the oak that is by Shechem.
Why it matters
What he does on waking is the reason the place has a sheet. He is afraid, says surely the LORD is in this place and I knew it not, sets up the stone he slept on as a pillar, pours oil on it, and calls the name of that place Bethel, the house of God. Then he makes a vow with conditions in it. Twenty years later he is told to go back and dwell there, and he arrives with a household that has to bury its foreign gods under an oak first.
3 songs
The music
Every song in the catalogue whose passage falls inside these chapters.
