(Genesis 28:10-32:3)
None of the Former
Jacob left Beer-sheba bound for Haran. Stopping for the night at a certain place, he fell asleep and had a strange dream. “And behold, a ladder was set in the ground, and its top reached to the heavens, and the angels of God were going up and down on it” (Gen 28:12). Interpreters wondered what this dream was intended to communicate. What did the ladder represent, and what to make of the angels going “up and down” on it? (And by the way, since angels are generally conceived to reside in heaven, shouldn’t they first have been going down the ladder, and only after that, up again?)
The midrashic collection Leviticus Rabba cites an explanation attributed to Rabbi Samuel ben Naḥman. According to his interpretation, Jacob indeed had a dream in which angels—four angels, to be precise—followed one another in climbing up an immense ladder. What sort of angels were they? The Torah says, “angels of God,” and this might make you think they were those highest angels who serve before the heavenly throne. However, it was a well-known fact that every nation in the world has its own guardian angel and—said Rabbi Samuel b. Naḥman —it was four of these national angels that Jacob saw in his dream.
The first to climb up the ladder was the national angel of Babylon; it climbed up seventy rungs of the ladder and then went down again. Jacob understood at once what this meant: his descendants would be exiled and ruled by Babylon for seventy years. “Certainly not a happy prediction,” he must have thought, “but survivable.”
The next angel to ascend was that of Persia and Media (who were traditionally joined). This angel climbed up fifty-two rungs and went down again—an additional fifty-two years of foreign domination of Jacob’s descendants. Then more bad news: Greece’s angel went up and kept going for one hundred and eighty rungs! Still, thought Jacob, my descendants will eventually drive them out of this land.
But the worst was the last angel, that of Rome; it went up, and up, and up, until Jacob cried out in despair: “O Lord, do You mean that this one will never come back down?” (Samuel ben Naḥman lived during the late third and early fourth century CE. By his time the Romans had been dominating Palestine for more than four hundred years.)
God reassured Jacob with a verse from the prophet Obadiah: “Though you soar aloft like an eagle, and though your nest is set among the stars, from there I will bring you down, says the Lord” (Obad 1:4). This verse was spoken by Obadiah about the Edomites, Israel’s neighbor to the southeast. But by Samuel ben Naḥman’s day, everyone knew that “Edom” was often another name for Rome. The sense of God’s words was thus clear: “Even if you see him [Rome’s angel] reach to the very heavens, I will still cause him to go down.” Jacob must have been reassured, although he knew that his descendants were still in for some tough times.
“Almost right,” opined another famous interpreter, Rabbi Shim‘on ben Menasya. The ladder indeed had four rungs, he explained, and each rung represented a foreign power that would rule over Israel: Babylon, Persia-Media, Greece, and Rome. “All you have to do is keep climbing this ladder,” God had told Jacob, “and everything will be fine.” But Jacob did not put his trust in God and did not climb up.
“If only you had climbed up,” God said, “you would never have had to go down again. But since you didn’t, your children will have to do the climbing, getting entangled and trapped on the way as they struggle from one nation to the next, from Babylon to Persia-Media, from Persia-Media to Greece, from Greece to Rome.” “Forever?” Jacob asked. God answered by quoting a famous verse in the book of Jeremiah: “Do not be afraid, Jacob, and have no fear, Israel.” What did He mean?
Normally Jacob and Israel are both names of the same person, Isaac’s son Jacob, but here they are different: Jacob is Isaac’s son, but Israel in this verse refers to the nation that Jacob founded, the people of Israel. At first God had turned to Jacob and told him to climb the ladder, using the first words of that verse from Jeremiah, “Do not be afraid, Jacob.” But Jacob was afraid nonetheless and did not climb up the ladder. Then God turned to Jacob’s descendants, the people of Israel. By a happy coincidence, the letters of “have no fear” (al teḥat) can also be read as, “Don’t go down.” That’s what He really meant: “You may indeed be afraid, but keep on going up anyway.” Good advice in tough times!