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Jacob's Ladder (Biblical Hebrew : סֻלָּם יַעֲקֹב, romanized: Sūllām Yaʿăqōḇ) is a ladder leading to heaven that was featured in a dream the biblical Patriarch Jacob had during his flight from his brother Esau in the Book of Genesis (chapter 28).
The significance of the dream has been debated, but most interpretations agree that it identified Jacob with the obligations and inheritance of the people chosen by God, as understood in Abrahamic religions.
The description of Jacob's Ladder appears in Genesis 28:10–19:
And Jacob went out from Beer-sheba, and went toward Haran. And he lighted upon the place, and tarried there all night, because the sun was set; and he took one of the stones of the place, and put it under his head, and lay down in that place to sleep. And 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 beside him, and said: 'I am the LORD, the 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. And thy seed shall be as the dust of the earth, and thou shalt spread abroad to the west, and to the east, and to the north, and to the south. And in thee and in thy seed shall all the families of the earth be blessed. And, behold, I am with thee, and will keep thee whithersoever thou goest, and will bring thee back into this land; for I will not leave thee, until I have done that which I have spoken to thee of.' And Jacob awaked out of his sleep, and he said: 'Surely the LORD is in this place; and I knew it not.' And he was afraid, and said: 'How full of awe is this place! this is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.' And Jacob rose up early in the morning, and took the stone that he had put under his head, and set it up for a pillar, and poured oil upon the top of it. And he called the name of that place Beth-el, but the name of the city was Luz at the first.
— Genesis 28:10–19 [1]
The classic Torah commentaries offer several interpretations of Jacob's Ladder. According to the Pirkei De-Rabbi Eliezer 35.6-10, the ladder signified the Four Exiles which the Jewish people would suffer before the coming of the messiah. First, the angel representing the Neo-Babylonian Empire climbed "up" 70 rungs, and then fell "down", a reference to the 70-year Babylonian exile. Then the angel representing the exile of the Achaemenid Empire went up several steps and fell, as did the angel representing the exile of Greece (the Hellenistic period Ptolemaic Kingdom and the Seleucid Empire). Only the fourth angel, which represented the final exile of the Roman Empire, called "Edom" (whose guardian angel was Esau himself), kept climbing higher and higher into the clouds. Jacob feared that his children would never be free of Esau's domination, but God assured him that at the End of Days, Edom too would fall. [2]
Another interpretation of the ladder keys into the fact that the angels first "ascended" and then "descended". The Midrash explains that Jacob, as a holy man, was always accompanied by angels. When he reached the border of the land of Canaan (the future Land of Israel), the angels who were assigned to the Holy Land returned to Heaven and the angels assigned to other lands came down to meet Jacob. When Jacob returned to Canaan, he was greeted by the angels who were assigned to the Holy Land.
Yet another interpretation is that the place at which Jacob stopped for the night was in reality Moriah, the future home of the Temple in Jerusalem, which was considered to be the "bridge" between Heaven and Earth. [3] The ladder therefore signifies the "bridge" between Heaven and Earth. Moreover, the ladder alludes to the giving of the Torah as another connection between heaven and earth. In this interpretation, it is also significant that the word for ladder (Hebrew : סלם, romanized: sullām) and the name for the mountain on which the Torah was given, Sinai (סיני) have the same gematria (numerical value of the letters).
The Hellenistic Jewish philosopher Philo, born in Alexandria, (d.c. 50 CE) presents his allegorical interpretation of the ladder in the first book of his De somniis. There he gives four interpretations, which are not mutually exclusive: [4]
The narrative of Jacob's Ladder was used, shortly after the destruction of the Second Temple in the Siege of Jerusalem (70 CE), as the basis for the pseudepigraphic Ladder of Jacob . This writing, preserved only in Old Church Slavonic, interprets the experience of Patriarchs in the context of Merkabah mysticism.
A hilltop overlooking the Israeli settlement of Beit El north of Jerusalem that is believed by some to be the site of Jacob's dream is a tourist destination during the holiday of Sukkot. [5]
Jesus said in John 1:51 "And he saith unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Hereafter ye shall see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of man." This statement has been interpreted as associating or implicating Jesus with the ladder, in that Christ bridges the gap between Heaven and Earth. Jesus presents himself as the reality to which the ladder points; as Jacob saw in a dream the reunion of Heaven and Earth, Jesus brought this reunion, metaphorically the ladder, into reality. Adam Clarke, an early 19th-century Methodist theologian and Bible scholar, elaborates:
That by the angels of God ascending and descending, is to be understood, that a perpetual intercourse should now be opened between heaven and earth, through the medium of Christ, who was God manifested in the flesh. Our blessed Lord is represented in his mediatorial capacity as the ambassador of God to men; and the angels ascending and descending upon the Son of Man, is a metaphor taken from the custom of dispatching couriers or messengers from the prince to his ambassador in a foreign court, and from the ambassador back to the prince. [7]
The theme of a ladder to heaven is often used by the Church Fathers. Irenaeus in the second century describes the Christian Church as the "ladder of ascent to God". [8]
In the third century, Origen [9] explains that there are two ladders in the life of a Christian, the ascetic ladder that the soul climbs on the earth, by way of—and resulting in—an increase in virtue, and the soul's travel after death, climbing up the heavens towards the light of God.
In the fourth century, Gregory of Nazianzus [10] speaks of ascending Jacob's Ladder by successive steps towards excellence, interpreting the ladder as an ascetic path, while Gregory of Nyssa narrates [11] that Moses climbed on Jacob's Ladder to reach the heavens where he entered the tabernacle not made with hands, thus giving the Ladder a clear mystical meaning. The ascetic interpretation is found also in Saint John Chrysostom, who writes:
And so mounting as it were by steps, let us get to heaven by a Jacob's ladder. For the ladder seems to me to signify in a riddle by that vision the gradual ascent by means of virtue, by which it is possible for us to ascend from earth to heaven, not using material steps, but improvement and correction of manners. [12]
Jacob's Ladder as an analogy for the spiritual ascetic of life enjoyed wide influence thanks to the classical work The Ladder of Divine Ascent by John Climacus. As such, the Carthusian monk Guigo II used it as inspiration for his description of the steps of the Lectio Divina and the contemporary philosopher Peter Kreeft used it in his apologetics. [13]
Jacob's Ladder is depicted on the facade of Bath Abbey in England, with angels climbing up and down ladders on either side of the main window on the west front.
In Islam, Jacob (Arabic : يَعْقُوب, romanized: Yaʿqūb) is revered as a prophet and patriarch. Muslim scholars drew a parallel between Jacob's vision of the ladder [14] and Muhammad's event of the Miʿrāj. [15] The ladder of Jacob was interpreted to be one of the many symbols of God, and many see Jacob's Ladder as representing in its form the essence of Islam, which emphasizes following the "straight path". The twentieth-century scholar Martin Lings described the significance of the ladder in the Islamic mystic perspective:
The ladder of the created Universe is the ladder which appeared in a dream to Jacob, who saw it stretching from Heaven to earth, with Angels going up and down upon it; and it is also the "straight path", for indeed the way of religion is none other than the way of creation itself retraced from its end back to its Beginning.
— Lings, Martin. The Book of Certainty. p. 51.
Jacob, later given the name Israel, is regarded as a patriarch of the Israelites and is an important figure in Abrahamic religions, such as Judaism, Samaritanism, Christianity, and Islam. Jacob first appears in the Book of Genesis, originating from the Hebrew tradition in the Torah. Described as the son of Isaac and Rebecca, and the grandson of Abraham, Sarah, and Bethuel, Jacob is presented as the second-born among Isaac's children. His fraternal twin brother is the elder, named Esau, according to the biblical account. Jacob is said to have bought Esau's birthright and, with his mother's help, deceived his aging father to bless him instead of Esau. Later in the narrative, following a severe drought in his homeland of Canaan, Jacob and his descendants, with the help of his son Joseph, moved to Egypt where Jacob died at the age of 147. He is supposed to have been buried in the Cave of Machpelah.
Jewish eschatology is the area of Jewish theology concerned with events that will happen in the end of days and related concepts. This includes the ingathering of the exiled diaspora, the coming of the Jewish Messiah, the afterlife, and the resurrection of the dead. In Judaism, the end times are usually called the "end of days", a phrase that appears several times in the Tanakh.
John Climacus, also known as John of the Ladder, John Scholasticus and John Sinaites, was a 6th–7th century Christian monk at the monastery on Mount Sinai. He is revered as a saint by the Eastern Orthodox Church and Roman Catholic Church.
The biblical Book of Genesis speaks of the relationship between fraternal twins Jacob and Esau, sons of Isaac and Rebecca. The story focuses on Esau's loss of his birthright to Jacob and the conflict that ensued between their descendant nations because of Jacob's deception of their aged and blind father, Isaac, in order to receive Esau's birthright/blessing from Isaac.
Esau is the elder son of Isaac in the Hebrew Bible. He is mentioned in the Book of Genesis and by the prophets Obadiah and Malachi. The Christian New Testament alludes to him in the Epistle to the Romans and in the Epistle to the Hebrews.
Merkabah or Merkavahmysticism is a school of early Jewish mysticism, c. 100 BCE – 1000 CE, centered on visions such as those found in Ezekiel 1 or in the hekhalot literature, concerning stories of ascents to the heavenly palaces and the Throne of God.
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The Stone of Jacob appears in the Book of Genesis as the stone used as a pillow by the Israelite patriarch Jacob at the place later called Bet-El. As Jacob had a vision in his sleep, he then consecrated the stone to God. More recently, the stone has been claimed by Scottish folklore and British Israelism.
Jacob wrestling with the angel or God is described in the Book of Genesis. The "angel" in question is referred to as "man" and "God" in Genesis, while Hosea references an "angel". The account includes the renaming of Jacob as Israel.
Vayetze, Vayeitzei, or Vayetzei is the seventh weekly Torah portion in the annual Jewish cycle of Torah reading. It constitutes Genesis 28:10–32:3. The parashah tells of Jacob's travels to, life in, and return from Harran. The parashah recounts Jacob's dream of a ladder to heaven, Jacob's meeting of Rachel at the well, Jacob's time working for Laban and living with Rachel and Leah, the birth of Jacob's children, and the departure of Jacob's family from Laban.
Vayishlach or Vayishlah is the eighth weekly Torah portion in the annual Jewish cycle of Torah reading. In the parashah, Jacob reconciles with Esau after wrestling with a "man." The prince Shechem rapes Dinah, whose brothers sack the city of Shechem in revenge. In the family's subsequent flight, Rachel gives birth to Benjamin and dies in childbirth.
Christ II, also called The Ascension, is one of Cynewulf's four signed poems that exist in the Old English vernacular. It is a five-section piece that spans lines 440–866 of the Christ triad in the Exeter Book, and is homiletic in its subject matter in contrast to the martyrological nature of Juliana, Elene, and Fates of the Apostles. Christ II draws upon a number of ecclesiastical sources, but it is primarily framed upon Gregory the Great’s Homily XXIX on Ascension Day.
The Ladder of Divine Ascent or Ladder of Paradise is an important ascetical treatise for monasticism in Eastern Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism, written by John Climacus in c. 600 AD; it was requested by John, Abbot of the Raithu monastery.
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The Ladder of Jacob is a pseudepigraphic writing of the Old Testament. It is usually considered to be part of the apocalyptic literature. The text has been preserved only in Slavonic, and it is clearly a translation from a now lost Greek version. It is not regarded as scripture by Jews or any Christian group.
The Jacobs Ladder Bridge is a covered footbridge over State Highway 1 in Auckland, New Zealand. It was officially opened on 15 December 2012.
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