A Stairway to Heaven, Genesis 28-29, Day 25, Jan 25 | Anita Mathias: Dreaming Beneath the Spires

William Blake, Stairway to Heaven

Genesis 28

¹ So Isaac called for Jacob and blessed him. Then he commanded him: “Do not marry a Canaanite woman. ² Go at once to Paddan Aram, to the house of your mother’s father Bethuel. Take a wife for yourself there, from among the daughters of Laban, your mother’s brother. ³ May God Almighty bless you and make you fruitful and increase your numbers until you become a community of peoples. ⁴ May he give you and your descendants the blessing given to Abraham, so that you may take possession of the land where you now reside as a foreigner, the land God gave to Abraham.” ⁵ Then Isaac sent Jacob on his way, and he went to Paddan Aram, to Laban son of Bethuel the Aramean, the brother of Rebekah, who was the mother of Jacob and Esau.

The power of these Old Testament blessings–and traditional and contemporary Jewish paternal blessings, perhaps–is that they were addressed to God in prayer. They were prayers spoken aloud, destiny-inducing prayers.

⁶ Now Esau learned that Isaac had blessed Jacob and had sent him to Paddan Aram to take a wife from there, and that when he blessed him he commanded him, “Do not marry a Canaanite woman,” ⁷ and that Jacob had obeyed his father and mother and had gone to Paddan Aram. ⁸ Esau then realized how displeasing the Canaanite women were to his father Isaac; ⁹ so he went to Ishmael and married Mahalath, the sister of Nebaioth and daughter of Ishmael son of Abraham, in addition to the wives he already had.

Jacob’s Dream at Bethel

¹⁰ Jacob left Beersheba and set out for Harran. ¹¹ When he reached a certain place, he stopped for the night because the sun had set. Taking one of the stones there, he put it under his head and lay down to sleep. ¹² He had a dream in which he saw a stairway resting on the earth, with its top reaching to heaven, and the angels of God were ascending and descending on it.
I love this. Prayer is the stairway to heaven. Heaven opens to us anywhere, and at any time, we sit down and send up the magic staircase.
A ladder between heaven and earth. God now dwells as much on earth as in heaven.
The only pre-conditions I think for setting up and anchoring this staircase are a repentant heart. A pure heart, preferably, and if not, a heart that by repentance is purified.

¹³ There above it stood the LORD, and he said: “I am the LORD, the God of your father Abraham and the God of Isaac. I will give you and your descendants the land on which you are lying.
A free gift given to the schemer.

¹⁴ Your descendants will be like the dust of the earth, and you will spread out to the west and to the east, to the north and to the south. All peoples on earth will be blessed through you and your offspring. ¹⁵ I am with you and will watch over you wherever you go,
Sweet words of promise repeated by Christ

and I will bring you back to this land. I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.”
Again, sweet words to strengthen Jacob through many years of travail.

¹⁶ When Jacob awoke from his sleep, he thought, “Surely the LORD is in this place, and I was not aware of it.”

How many times in my life has the Lord been in a place of disappointment, in a place of injustice, in a place of failure, in a place of glacial slowness, and I was not aware of it.

I feel sorry now for the time I spent in bitterness and resentment. The Lord was in that place, and I was not aware of it.

¹⁷ He was afraid and said, “How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God; this is the gate of heaven.”

Not just Bethel, but the gates which slide open to us when we pray.

NIV–Jesus himself is the bridge between heaven and earth

Brilliant!! A stairway between heaven and earth, and God himself at the top of the stairway speaking words of reassurance, comfort and prophecy.

And why does he give Jacob this vision, after Jacob’s lies, deception and hard-balled manipulation?

Because of his great mercy.

¹⁸ Early the next morning Jacob took the stone he had placed under his head and set it up as a pillar and poured oil on top of it. ¹⁹ He called that place Bethel, though the city used to be called Luz.

²⁰ Then Jacob made a vow, saying, “If God will be with me and will watch over me on this journey I am taking and will give me food to eat and clothes to wear ²¹so that I return safely to my father’s household, then the LORD will be my God ²² and this stone that I have set up as a pillar will be God’s house, and of all that you give me I will give you a tenth.”

A tenth was a King’s share. Jacob thereby will acknowledges God as his Lord and King.

He is not yet fully committed to the Lord. It is a conditional vow.

Genesis 29

Jacob Arrives in Paddan Aram

¹ Then Jacob continued on his journey and came to the land of the eastern peoples. ² There he saw a well in the open country, with three flocks of sheep lying near it because the flocks were watered from that well. The stone over the mouth of the well was large. ³ When all the flocks were gathered there, the shepherds would roll the stone away from the well’s mouth and water the sheep. Then they would return the stone to its place over the mouth of the well.

⁴ Jacob asked the shepherds, “My brothers, where are you from?”

“We’re from Harran,” they replied.

⁵ He said to them, “Do you know Laban, Nahor’s grandson?”

“Yes, we know him,” they answered.

⁶ Then Jacob asked them, “Is he well?”

“Yes, he is,” they said, “and here comes his daughter Rachel with the sheep.”

⁷ “Look,” he said, “the sun is still high; it is not time for the flocks to be gathered. Water the sheep and take them back to pasture.”

⁸ “We can’t,” they replied, “until all the flocks are gathered and the stone has been rolled away from the mouth of the well. Then we will water the sheep.”

⁹ While he was still talking with them, Rachel came with her father’s sheep, for she was a shepherd. ¹⁰ When Jacob saw Rachel daughter of his uncle Laban, and Laban’s sheep, he went over and rolled the stone away from the mouth of the well and watered his uncle’s sheep. ¹¹ Then Jacob kissed Rachel and began to weep aloud. ¹² He had told Rachel that he was a relative of her father and a son of Rebekah. So she ran and told her father.

¹³ As soon as Laban heard the news about Jacob, his sister’s son, he hurried to meet him. He embraced him and kissed him and brought him to his home, and there Jacob told him all these things. ¹⁴ Then Laban said to him, “You are my own flesh and blood.”

Jacob Marries Leah and Rachel

After Jacob had stayed with him for a whole month, ¹⁵ Laban said to him, “Just because you are a relative of mine, should you work for me for nothing? Tell me what your wages should be.”

¹⁶ Now Laban had two daughters; the name of the older was Leah, and the name of the younger was Rachel. ¹⁷ Leah had weak^[a] eyes, but Rachel had a lovely figure and was beautiful. ¹⁸ Jacob was in love with Rachel and said, “I’ll work for you seven years in return for your younger daughter Rachel.”

¹⁹ Laban said, “It’s better that I give her to you than to some other man. Stay here with me.” ²⁰ So Jacob served seven years to get Rachel, but they seemed like only a few days to him because of his love for her.

²¹ Then Jacob said to Laban, “Give me my wife. My time is completed, and I want to make love to her.”

²² So Laban brought together all the people of the place and gave a feast. ²³ But when evening came, he took his daughter Leah and brought her to Jacob, and Jacob made love to her. ²⁴ And Laban gave his servant Zilpah to his daughter as her attendant.

²⁵ When morning came, there was Leah! So Jacob said to Laban, “What is this you have done to me? I served you for Rachel, didn’t I? Why have you deceived me?”

²⁶ Laban replied, “It is not our custom here to give the younger daughter in marriage before the older one. ²⁷ Finish this daughter’s bridal week; then we will give you the younger one also, in return for another seven years of work.”

The deceiver is deceived. He reaps what he sows. And so it works with grinding inevitability.

NIV, Jacob, deceiver in name as well as in behaviour has himself been deceived. The one who tried everything to obtain the benefits of the firstborn has now, against his will, received the first born.

As he manipulated away his brother’s birthright, so he too has been cruelly deceived into working seven years for a wife he does not particularly love.

²⁸ And Jacob did so. He finished the week with Leah, and then Laban gave him his daughter Rachel to be his wife. ²⁹ Laban gave his servant Bilhah to his daughter Rachel as her attendant. ³⁰ Jacob made love to Rachel also, and his love for Rachel was greater than his love for Leah. And he worked for Laban another seven years.

Jacob’s Children

³¹ When the LORD saw that Leah was not loved, he enabled her to conceive, but Rachel remained childless.
God in his own way is just. “Righteous art thou, O Lord, when I complain to thee,/ Yet I would plead my case before thee.” Jeremiah 12.
³² Leah became pregnant and gave birth to a son. She named him Reuben, for she said, “It is because the LORD has seen my misery. Surely my husband will love me now.”

³³ She conceived again, and when she gave birth to a son she said, “Because the LORD heard that I am not loved, he gave me this one too.” So she named him Simeon.

³⁴ Again she conceived, and when she gave birth to a son she said, “Now at last my husband will become attached to me, because I have borne him three sons.” So he was named Levi.

³⁵ She conceived again, and when she gave birth to a son she said, “This time I will praise the LORD.” So she named him Judah. Then she stopped having children.

Interestingly, the one for whom she praised God, rather than used as a sure basis for gaining the love of Jacob, proved the ancestor of Jesus.

“The heart has its reasons of which reason never dreams,” Blaise Pascal. If love does not come freely, it is near impossible for it to be “earned,” as Leah sadly discovers.