Jacob in Haran and Back Again (Gen. 29-32)

Recently, we began to talk about Jacob and his trip to Haran.  We talked about the dream he had at Bethel—the dream of the ladder—and the promise he made to God there.  We also talked about how he fulfilled that promise many years later when he got back to the Land of Israel.

Today we’re going to talk about the rest of Jacob’s adventure:  his time in Haran and how God used that time to shape him into the man of God he later became.  Because if there’s one thing we know for sure about Jacob, it’s that when he started off in life, he was trouble.  Oh yes, he was a good boy, a mama’s boy (Gen. 25:27,28).  But he was also a liar and a cheater; a deceiver.

Jacob’s Vision of the Ladder (Gen. 28)

Bethel:  site of Jacob's Vision

Jacob’s vision of the ladder has inspired many through the centuries.  Maybe you’ve heard the song “We Are Climbing Jacob’s Ladder” (new tab: audio).  It’s a famous African American spiritual that understands Jacob’s ladder as a symbol of the believer’s spiritual ascent into heaven.  The ascent is slow and agonizing, but the result is glory.

The slaves who sang this song weren’t the first to find spiritual meaning in Jacob’s vision.  The early Church understood it in a similar way.  Origen in the 3rd cent. AD understood the ladder to be a picture of the soul’s ascent to God after death.  He also saw it as a picture of increasing virtue in the life of the believer.  This understanding was closely linked to the monastic ideal of asceticism: the idea of denying the world and denying worldliness in order to follow Jesus.

One of the most famous expressions of this idea was the book, The Ladder of Divine Ascent (new tab: pdf) (7th cent. AD). Here again, the ladder is understood to be one that we must travel on to reach God in heaven.  But the original vision of Jacob was quite different. Instead, God used the ladder to come down to meet with Jacob on earth. He came to prepare him for the dangers of his trip to the distant city of Haran. And in the process, he also prepared us for the coming of the divine messenger of God, a messenger who is himself God: God’s Son who would appear in human form as Jesus.