“Jacob left Beer-sheba and went toward Haran.”

It sounds as though Jacob just went out for groceries, which makes this sentence an outstanding example of understatement. 

Jacob didn’t just “leave” Beer-sheba. He fled. He was in serious trouble, and his doting mother sent him away in order to preserve his life. 

Jacob was in exile.

Perhaps this doesn’t come as a surprise. One of the meanings of Jacob’s name is “supplanter.” As we saw last week, he had already begun the process of supplanting his brother Esau’s place in the family by conning Esau out of his birthright for a bowl of (I’m sure very delicious) red lentil stew. Later, in the story just before this passage, Isaac had become very old and almost blind, and his wife Rebekah persuaded her favorite son Jacob to disguise himself as hairy Esau by covering his face and hands with goatskin and cooking an array of meaty delicacies for his father, who (after some suspicious hesitation) bestowed his blessing upon the younger, rather than the elder, brother. (Thus the supplanting.) When the deception was revealed, Esau was devastated, plaintively crying out, “Have you only one blessing, Father? Bless me, me also, Father!” You had to feel for the poor guy. But devastation gave way to rage, and Esau swore to kill Jacob for what he had done to him. 

So, Rebekah sent her boy away: 

“Now therefore, my son, obey my voice; flee at once to my brother Laban in Haran, and stay with him a while, until your brother’s fury turns away…and he forgets what you have done to him…”

Something to ponder here: Did Jacob know of God’s Promise to his grandfather Abraham–a promise later reiterated to Isaac– that his heirs would be as numerous as the stars in the sky? Did Jacob know of the oracle to Rebekah that his progeny would be a nation that would be stronger than his brother’s, “…the elder shall serve the younger”? We can speculate, and certainly there is ancient Jewish commentary (midrash) that does so, but we don’t know for sure. What we do know is that, in this moment, having arrived at this unknown place between Beer-sheba and Haran, Jacob is in a state of exile. Alone, afraid, without resources, without family support, with an uncertain future, and nothing but a rock for a pillow. Jacob is effectively no one, in no place.

He sleeps.

He dreams. 

The Bible is full of dreams. In our post-Enlightenment world, the idea that dreams are a legitimate part of the spiritual journey is arguable. Some take dreams very seriously, while others believe that our dream life is simply the result of physical stimuli such as, as Dickens wrote, “an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of underdone potato.” But in the ancient world it was taken for granted that dreams were the places of encounter with the Divine. This is when the sleeping one is undefended, unable to engage in the usual waking tricks of defensiveness, self-delusion and denial. Even more important, these are encounters that God alone initiates; the dreamer is not in the driver’s seat. In other words, Dreamland is a textbook example of vulnerability.

So as Jacob sleeps, God creeps into his dream and stands beside him as angels proceed up and down a ladder in front of him. Hebrew Bible scholar Walter Brueggemann proposes a more culturally helpful image, beginning by cautioning us not to picture angels as glittery winged creatures but as divine messengers, proceeding up and down, not a ladder, but more like a ramp that is part of a ziggurat–an earthen Mesopotamian structure shaped like a pyramid reaching skyward. Thus, according to Brueggemann, Jacob witnesses the extraordinary sight of the joining of earth and heaven, with God completely present beside him. 

Brueggemann writes, “[This] has become a visual vehicle for a Gospel assertion. Earth is not left to its own resources and heaven is not a remote self-contained realm for the gods. Heaven has to do with earth. And earth finally may count on the resources of heaven.”

This wasn’t just a vision of God. It was God. And God had come bearing a new version of the Promise; this one two-fold:

“the land on which you lie I will give to you and to your offspring; and your offspring shall be like the dust of the earth, and you shall spread abroad to the west and to the east and to the north and to the south; and all the families of the earth shall be blessed in you and in your offspring.”

Land. A legacy of offspring. A future. This was the blessing to Jacob’s family, reflecting the promise to Abraham and Isaac. But wait, there’s more:

“Know that I am with you and will keep you wherever you go, and will bring you back to this land; for I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.”

This part of the Promise is personal: “Jacob, I will be with you, and I will protect you, and I will bring you home. You. Can. Trust. Me.”

For the first, but not the last, time in his life, Jacob awakens as a new person. We no longer need to wonder whether or not he was aware of God’s Promise to Abraham and Isaac, or of the oracle to Rebekah. There is no doubt now; Jacob is now an active part of the Promise.

“How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.”

He sets his stone pillow up as a pillar and anoints it, now marking this place of his dream, this nameless waystation on his journey of exile, as a place of great significance–“Beth-el”, House of God.

Jacob the Nobody has become Somebody. No Place has become Someplace, Beth-el. Exile has become promise. All now bound to, and reoriented toward, God.

This is a story of transformation. And as Richard Rohr writes, “There is no authentic God experience which does not situate us in the world in a different way and cause us to see things differently and act accordingly.”

Jacob’s story speaks to us, not just because it is a story of God’s promised faithfulness, but primarily because God’s faithfulness is declared and articulated to one who is in a state of maximum vulnerability, who is ripe for transformation. Jacob is exiled–alone, uncertain, without resources, his guile useless. It is at this point that God comes to him. The good news for those who come to this story from their own state of exile, grief, guilt, and suffering is that God will find us at our most vulnerable and has promised to bring us home. 

The Psalmist echoes this: 

“…Lord you have searched me out and known me, you know my sitting down and my rising up…Where can I go then from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? … Search me out, O God, and know my heart; try me and know my restless thoughts. Look well whether there be any wickedness in me and lead me in the path that is everlasting.”

But God’s comfort and reassurance do not come without challenge. God’s Promise doesn’t shield us from our frail human condition; as a matter of fact, to our dismay it even seems to collide with it, especially in our own close encounters with suffering and grief when we may question whether God even hears our cries. But actually, God’s Promise doesn’t so much collide with, as much as it draws us into, the human condition, into solidarity with the exiled and the suffering among us, at our margins, and yes, even within our very selves.  God’s Promise recalls us to Jacob’s dream of angels traversing divine/earthly boundaries, linking heaven and earth, and we remember the words that Jesus taught us, “Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” Just as Jacob was called into active participation in God’s Promise, we are also called into God’s Dream–accomplished through us and with God’s grace, as we “walk each other home.” * 

*With gratitude to spiritual teacher, Ram Dass.