Jacob's Ladder

Now the time came that Jacob was caused to leave his home and journey into Syria, to the brother of his mother Rebekah, in search of a wife.

By nightfall of the first day, Jacob had walked about 40 miles from south of Jerusalem to a bleak stony moorland in the hill country north of Jerusalem. Here, Jacob lay down to sleep under the stars with only a few gathered stones to serve as his pillow.

And as he slept, "he dreamed, and behold 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, and behold the Lord stood above it, and said, I am the Lord God of Abraham thy father, and the God of Isaac; the land whereon thou liest, to thee will I give it, and to thy seed" (Genesis 28:12-13).

Because of the divine presence, Jacob named the place Beth-el, and He made a vow, dedicating a tenth of his possessions to Jehovah.

But what does this ladder mean? The Lord Jesus explained it when He called Nathanael, as recorded in John 1:45-51, to which Nathanael believed, and replied, "Rabbi, thou art the Son of God; thou art the King of Israel." The ladder is the Lord Jesus Christ.

We come to the Father through Christ. That is the only way to come into the presence of God. Jesus said, "I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me" (John 14:6). "If God dwell with us, and we with him, it is by Christ."[3] In Jewish belief, the ladder is also a metaphor for prayer. Rung by rung believers are connected from the finite materialistic world to the infinite by prayer.[4]

Life is also compared to a ladder by asking one's self, which way is my life headed? Am I going up, or am I going down? It is far better, you see, to be at the bottom going up, than at the top going down.

In Japan, there is a no-room-to-pass one lane gravel road snaking up a mountain to a lovely resort named Nikko. It was a terribly frightening ascent as our bus creeked and groaned its way up the rising grade, as the driver called out loudly to us, "Don't look down!" For you see, the only way to avoid or decrease fear is not to look down.

The copyright of the article Jacob's Ladder in Messianic Judaism is owned by Virginia Marin. Permission to republish Jacob's Ladder in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.

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