ʼ נ נ ה
From Bethel to Peniel A Study of Jacob Genesis 25:19--35:29
SIXb Jacob at Bethel (Genesis 28:1-22)
Genesis 28:20:21: “If God will be with me, and will keep me in this way that I go, and will give me bread to eat and clothing to wear, so that I come again to my father’s house in peace, then the LORD shall be my God.”
A week ago we went “up” the ladder with Jacob in his dream, now we bring our gaze “down” the ladder to see how Jacob reacts. We left Jacob awaking from his sleep exclaiming
“Surely the LORD is in this place—and I did not know it!” And he was afraid, and said, “How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven” (Gen. 28:16-17).
Jacob is on an emotional “high.” How long will his “high” endure? Will he be subject to the normal human psychic pattern and experience a following “low”? As the preacher does on Mondays—and sometimes a Sunday School teacher! But does Jacob’s response continue in his high or does it descend to a “low”? What is he to think, what is he do as he responds to his new emotional state?
Will Jacob’s experience of the holy make any difference in who he is and how he conducts himself? As he assimilates his encounter with the beyond, to what extent will it open him up to any change of character? Or will it? Will there be any impact on how Jacob perceives himself, on who he thinks himself now to be—and his future? We will attempt to find out as our concern turns to
Jacob’s Response (28:16-17)
Then Jacob woke from his sleep and said, “Surely the LORD is in this place—and I did not know it!” 17And he was afraid, and said, “How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.”
As Jacob awakes suddenly from his dream, we are reminded of Moses at “the mountain of God” (Exod. 3:1). Here Moses sees the bush that refused to burn up and hears God calling, “Come no closer! Remove the sandals from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.”
In response, “Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look at God” (Exod. 3:5, 7). With Jacob like with Moses--“the place on which you are standing is holy ground.” There too “place” is in the foreground: Jacob exclaims that “Surely the LORD is in this place. . . !” With the exception of the lie to his father in 27:20, the name of God is on Jacob’s lips for the first time in his story.
Jacob is amazed: “I did not know it!” When what he sees sinks in, his amazement turns to fear; he is shaken up. Jacob was awestruck “and said, ‘How awesome is this place!’” Jacob’s experience was near to the element of “awefulness” in Rudolf Otto’s chapter on Mysterium Tremendum where he writes that “the awe or ‘dread’ may indeed be so overwhelmingly great that it seems to penetrate to the very marrow, making the man’s hair bristle and his limbs quake”?
Jacob can imagine no better way to describe the place than as “the house of God.” Or, in a more daring metaphor, as an entrance into the divine realm—“the gate of heaven”—heaven is open! Jacob can no longer view his world, in N. T. Wright’s apt phrase, as a “split-level cosmos.” In seeing the LORD in his dream, he has penetrated heaven. We can imagine the impact of that awareness! Jacob utters only a numb “I did not know.” Fokkelman suggests that his exclamation may well indicate that he feels a bit of shame and self-reproach that paves the way for his fear; it is an awe that in turn sharpens his eye for a deeper insight into his dream.
Jacob’s discovery that the place where he was sleeping was indeed “the house of God” brings to mind those special places in our lives all of us have--holy places that determine and define who and what we are. I have an early memory of the holy as linked with place:
There was a small box-like wooden church in Valentine, Nebraska, some thirteen miles from the ranch. While still in college, I would attend with my Methodist mother from time to time on Sunday nights. For me, just to walk into that wooden box was to sense the presence of the Holy, it was “the house of God.” The catalyst for that “other” atmosphere was a small gray-haired lady, Grandma Horner. She would sit in the second row, lean over the wooden bench in front of her and constantly respond in praise to song and sermon. Somehow, she gave rise to a sense of awe in me. It was “the Presence” that I experienced there that eventually led me into the Church of the Nazarene and its ministry in the good providence of God.
There were other leading influences as well, but the most compelling attraction, however, was an inescapable sense of the holy that met me on occasion in the environment of the Church of the Nazarene—what I thought my Methodist heritage was all about. In my thinking, I became a Nazarene so I could remain a Methodist!
Back to Jacob’s experience of the holy. He is so profoundly moved that he turns to ritual expression. The narrator transitions from verbal to physical action of necessity, to something concrete, to
Jacob’s Stone (28:18-19)
So Jacob rose early in the morning, and he took the stone that he had put under his head and set it up for a pillar and poured oil on the top of it. 19He called that place Bethel; but the name of the city was Luz at the first.
We humans require ritual. We need to add to our thoughts posture, hands, and voice. Such is true whether we are singing “Take me out to the ballgame” at the seventh inning stretch or “Praise God from whom all blessings flow” after the offering. We enjoy weddings as the exchanges of vows by those we love touch our emotions. Some take part in walks to raise money for a favorite cause and others gather for protests. Physical action displays the inner experience in outward form. So it is with Jacob’s response. Like the baseball umpire with balls and strikes—a pitch is meaningless until the umpire speaks! Physical objects are what we make them; meaning is what we “give” to them! Jacob’s object was a stone.
Jacob’s first action is to take one of the stones he had placed about his head as he slept “and set it up for a pillar and poured oil on the top of it.” Pillars in the world of his day could either be natural or carved, inscribed or plain. Jacob apparently leaves the stone he has erected just as he finds it as a memorial of his now understood sacred dream. He dedicates it to his purpose by anointing the stone with oil that so stains it that those who pass by may recognize it as a sacred symbol.
The “top” of the pillar corresponds to “the top” of the stairway “reaching to heaven” (v. 12). As a cultic pillar the stone could have been quite large requiring near Herculean strength to lift it. This would then anticipate Jacob’s feat with a massive weight of stone in the next episode in which he meets Rachel at a well. This is the first of four times that Jacob erects a stone, each time the stone functions differently (28:18; 31:45-49; 35:14, 20).
Jacob’s second action is to give the place a name, “Bethel,” meaning “the house of God” (v. 17). His action is in essence, a name change, for “the name of the city was Luz at the first.” The Canaanite town has lost its identity. The character of “that place” is now so changed that a “new name” is required! Name changes are not neutral, whether of places or people—when God is involved! These actions are then brought to a climax with
Jacob’s Vow (28:20-22)
Then Jacob made a vow, saying, “If God will be with me, and will keep me in this way that I go, and will give me bread to eat and clothing to wear, 21so that I come again to my father’s house in peace, then the LORD shall be my God, 22and this stone, which I have set up for a pillar, shall be God’s house; and of all that you give me I will surely give one tenth to you.”
Jacob’s encounter with God at Bethel inspires him to make a vow. His experience changes his life as all such experiences often do. Bethel is now a sacred place for him because of what happened there and the resultant vow. Bethel appears in significant ways throughout the Jacob story.
When Jacob later is instructed to leave his father-in-law Laban and return to the land of his birth, an angel of God speaks to him in a dream saying, “I am the God of Bethel, where you anointed a pillar and made a vow to me. Now leave this land at once and return to the land of your birth” (31:13). Moving on in the story, Bethel appears as again God gives Jacob the command to move on: “Arise, go up to Bethel, and settle there. Make an altar there to the God who appeared to you when you fled from your brother Esau” (35:1-7).
The vow that Jacob vows, as the Hebrew reads, repeats language from God’s promise to Jacob. The vow reflects his dream of a stairway with trafficking angels reaching to heaven with the LORD standing above it (v. 15). Jacob adds “bread to eat and clothing to wear.” The mood of Jacob’s vow appears conditional, a big IF: “If God . . . then the LORD shall be my God.” Three aspects of God’s promise on which Jacob vows to base his future life are repeated. First, “If God will be with me,” relies on the promise he has just heard in his dream, words spoken in the biblical record first to Jacob: “I am with you” (v.15).
Second, “If God . . . will keep me in this way that I go,” is a frequent Old Testament promise of protection as in the blessing, “The LORD bless you and keep you” (Num. 6:24). The way that Jacob goes is in stark contrast to the way of Abraham’s servant in chapter 24 who crossed the desert in grand style with a retinue of camels and underlings to find a bride for Jacob. Jacob is fleeing alone on foot on a most dangerous journey.
The third aspect of the promise that Jacob repeats, “so that I come again to my father’s house in peace,” carries with it the full patriarchal promise of land and numerous descendants. An assurance that “I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you” (v.15) accompanies the promise. Jacob’s promised return confirms his future. On these three conditions, the text seems to read, Jacob will confess that first of all “the LORD shall be my God.” The LORD of the covenant with Abraham and Isaac will be his God as well. Is Jacob striking a bargain with his vow, is he hedging, bargaining with God to his discredit—“If . . . then”?
But what Jacob now expresses as a condition God has already promised unconditionally. Jacob is claiming the promise as his own; he is holding God to his word as the foundation of his life for the future—and posterity. As Fretheim concludes, “bargain language does not do justice to the vow.”
Jacob is only at the beginning of his quest; he is not yet the man of faith who wrestles with a mysterious man of the night (32:24). But his prayer arises authentically from the heart for Jacob is only responding humanly to the covenant God offers him. His vow expresses his experience, not his philosophy. To what extent, however, does Jacob remain, asks Alter, “the suspicious bargainer—a ‘wrestler’ with words and conditions just as he is a physical wrestler, a heel-grabber”?
Two more actions flow from Jacob’s new affirmation of faith. The stone which he has set up as a pillar “shall be God’s house,” and of all that God gives him he “will surely give one tenth” to God. The first affects a place and the second, Jacob’s material possessions. The tithe appears to be a one-time gift, probably for the care of the newly dedicated place. Von Rad sees Jacob as the originator of tithes given to Bethel, and those who brought them after Jacob’s action would share somewhat in Jacob’s vow.
The stone that Jacob has set up as a monument to bear witness to his awesome experience, both to himself and others, is also named as a holy sanctuary. It is a place or area of worship, “God’s house.” It is now a “Bethel” instead of a “Luz,” the reality of the patriarchal faith in place of an unreal Canaanite religion. Yet the stone is more than a witness; it is an object and a place of divine power representing God himself.
Jacob’s life and travels are now filled with a new sense of vocation. Awesomeness and the themes of presence and access flow together in his response to his dream. God has indeed come near to the one who now bears the promise. Jacob’s faith depends on this heavenly invasion into his earthly world. Yet, Jacob remains Jacob. We cannot help but ask, what actually happens in Jacob’s heart at Bethel? May we call it a conversion? Is Brueggemann stretching it when he writes that Jacob “is prepared to repent and believe”? Is Mann on target when he writes that “Jacob’s vow at Bethel is the beginning of his conversion.”?
Let us forget for a moment the scaffolding of the labels we evangelicals love, and ask to what precisely does the biblical text witness? What actually is taking place in Jacob’s heart and life? What God is doing is what is important. So what in essence happens? Whatever it was, do we know it in our own journey? We summarize: first, Jacob is in awe, he encounters the holy, the wholly other. Second, he recognizes that it is the God of his fathers, Abraham and Isaac, who is present with him as he sleeps and dreams.
Third, the LORD gives Jacob a promise for his future—“I am with you . . . . and will bring you back to this land.” Fourth, Jacob takes steps to encase his experience in ritual action—“Bethel, . . . pillar.” Fifth, he makes an authentic commitment, a vow--“the LORD shall be my God, . . . one tenth to you.” Can we say with Paul that here we have “a new creation” (2 Cor.5:17)? Certainly, “yes” in the presence of a new relationship--“my God.” Jacob binds himself to his God as God bound himself to Jacob in the oracle to Rebekah regarding the future of her twins while they were still in the womb (25:23).
A response of life, a commitment, follows an encounter with the “holy.” Jacob will walk in a new way. The road he travels is remarkably different as he heads for uncle Laban. Jacob’s experience of the awesome impacts his response; the character of a newly revealed God is transforming the character of the dreaming Jacob in some measure. But how much change and how soon awaits the rest of the story. Jacob will still be Jacob—we never become “not ourselves”! The holy plus the promise, leads to a new commitment for Jacob!
One may compare Jacob’s experience of the holy with that of the Apostle Peter. Peter has been fishing all night with no catch when Jesus enters his boat. He complains to Jesus about his “no fish.” At Jesus’ command, Peter sails the boat out into deep water and lets his nets down one more time. At once the nets in his and a companion boat are so full that the nets are beginning to break. The boats are sinking as they fill up with fish. Peter sees it, falls at Jesus’ knees, and cries out, “Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man” (Luke 5:8). Jacob’s perception does not yet reach the depth of Peter’s call—he is not yet ready to confess his true character.
Even more striking for our faith are Jesus’ prophetic words to Nathaniel in the Gospel of John: “Very truly, I tell you, you will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man” (1:51). Jacob’s dream invades the New Testament on the lips of Jesus whom John’s narrative designates the Lamb of God, the Messiah, the Son of God, and the King of Israel (1:36-49). How near is the heavenly realm, how close is God to us? God and his heaven are as near as is Jesus--the incarnate Son, the One “close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known” (1:18).
Moses once dared to ask God. “Show me your glory, I pray” (Exod. 33:18). The Apostle John declares that
the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth” (1:14).
The Apostle Paul’s thrilling presentation of a “new covenant” in Jesus to the Corinthians transports us to thrilling heights:
And all of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another; for this comes from the Lord, the Spirit 2 Cor. 3:18).
For it is God who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ (2 Cor. 4:6). Rudolf Otto, The Idea of the Holy, trans. John W. Harvey (New York: Oxford University Press, 1923), 16. N. T. Wright, Simply Jesus: A New Vision of Who He Was, What He Did, and Why He Matters (New York: HarperCollins, 2011), 59. Fokkelman, Narrative Art in Genesis, 64. Abraham had built an altar previously at Bethel (Gen. 12:8; 13:3-4). Bethel is mentioned in the Bible more frequently than any other town except Jerusalem. It was destroyed by Josiah (2 Kings 23:15). Fretheim, “The Book of Genesis,” 542. Alter, Genesis, 150. Von Rad, Genesis, 281. Brueggeman, Genesis, 246. Mann, The Book of the Torah, 56.
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