The LORD is In This Place

Although we do not see it as much as with the chapters on Abraham and Sarah, in Genesis 27:41-28:22, we get a picture of Isaac and Rebekah maturing in faith at just the time they need it most. In his commentary, Kidner says,

“Rebekah’s quick grasp of the situation and characters shows itself again, first in her recognition that she must lose Jacob to save him, and then in her persuasive handling of both son and father.”1

Two things Rebekah knew—Jacob needed to survive, but Jacob needed to be blessed, because mere survival as an exile is what Adam and Eve had in being expelled from the Garden. So Jacob was charged, and so Isaac saw the same, and made the blessing more specific.

• God brings us to the end of ourselves on earth.

• God brings Himself to us as the beginning of heaven.

Doctrine. Christ alone bridges the gap between this place and God’s place, and every covenant child must experience God in this way.   

That second part should not be taken the wrong way. I do not mean that the exact circumstances must be experienced. We are not talking about sensationalism here. I simply mean that each of us must know God in Christ, and we must come to terms with our sin and the remedy Jesus provides. We must own it for ourselves, and, as the older evangelists often said, “close things” or “settle” with Jesus.

God brings us to the end of ourselves on earth.

When we begin to lose people—and sometimes that just means to lose track of people—we are tempted to believe that God is leaving us too. God can feel absent with the absence of others. The backdrop of Jacob’s journey of faith is what seems like the dissolution of the chosen family. Esau is cursed. Jacob is driven away. Isaac and Rebekah face what years they have left as something far worse than empty nesters. There are four things typified here (i.) the fear of our loved one’s safety, (ii.) the loathing of life, (iii.) the helpless spectacle of apostasy, and then, finally, (iv.) a letting go of it all.

There is the fear of our loved ones’ safety—‘Behold, your brother Esau comforts himself about you by planning to kill you’ (v. 42). Now this is an extreme case, because we’re talking about the extreme of violence and your own family. But we understand that the greatest danger to our loved ones is to end life apart from God.

There is the loathing of life.

“Then Rebekah said to Isaac, ‘I loathe my life because of the Hittite women. If Jacob marries one of the Hittite women like these, one of the women of the land, what good will my life be to me?” (v. 46)

In other words, there is the sense of having failed if they all fail to live for God. That’s why John says about his spiritual children: “I have no greater joy than to hear that my children are walking in the truth” (3 John 4).

There is the helpless spectacle of total apostasy: ‘ So when Esau saw that the Canaanite women did not please Isaac his father, Esau went to Ishmael and took as his wife, besides the wives he had’ (vv. 8-9) these three others. The outworking of apostasy. This is Romans 1 follow-through. Someone who lives to now thumb their nose at God. To see them consciously doing so.

There is, finally, the letting go of all of it. I know we sometimes joke at those pithy sayings that are nowhere in Scripture. Usually, “Let go and let God” is on that shortlist—partly because it actually represented a faulty view of sanctification in the nineteenth century within what was called the Keswick movement. But rather than bore you with that, I would remind you instead that every lie is a twisted truth. There actually is a time to let go of what only God can do in the first place. We are told to “[cast] all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you” (1 Pet. 5:7).

It wasn’t only the parents who learned to let go, but obviously Jacob’s original plans were not to leave the Promised Land either. His coming to faith was a letting go. Coming to Christ is a coming to the end of ourselves on earth.

God brings Himself to us as the beginning of heaven.

In verses 10 through 22, we see Jacob brought into the same awareness of the covenant of grace as was possessed by his grandfather Abraham and his father Isaac.

Four things that Jacob needed, and all of God’s people need. We are only ready to see such a need once we have come to the end of ourselves on earth, but we need God’s initiative, God’s mediation, God’s promise, and God’s presence.

First, we need God’s INITIATIVE. This is the significance of the detail, ‘And behold, the LORD stood above it and said’ (v. 13), though the reader ought to already conclude that this is God’s doing.

Second, we need God’s MEDIATION. This is the significance of the imagery of ‘a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven’ (v. 12). Ladders are for getting up to where you can’t get. Sometimes they are even for getting out of a pit; and the earth without heaven is becoming the ultimate pit. Although, as Kinder points out, “‘Stairway’ would be a better term than ladder, in view of the stream of messengers ascending and descending.”2

Third, we need that reminder of God’s PROMISES.

“I am the LORD, the God of Abraham your father and the God of Isaac. The land on which you lie I will give to you and to your offspring. 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 in you and your offspring shall all the families of the earth be blessed” (vv. 13-14).

Fourth, we need God’s PRESENCE. He says, ‘Behold, 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’ (v. 15). For God to call us and awaken us to His covenant promises means that God has marked us out, is personally aware of us and fully intent on bringing us into His everlasting joy. Later, He drops hints that this was part of the symbolism of God above His angels on these stairs.

“When the Most High gave to the nations their inheritance, when he divided mankind, he fixed the borders of the peoples according to the number of the sons of God. But the LORD’s portion is his people, Jacob his allotted heritage” (Deut. 32:8-9).

On a personal level, what this means is that Jacob (just like our children) needs to encounter God personally. We may bless them. We must bless them! But every covenant child needs to be regenerated by the Holy Spirit (not by us), needs to come to repent and believe in Jesus Christ themselves. We can’t do it for them. Children of Christian homes: Your parents’ ups and downs with God are no shield for you to hide behind on Judgment Day. You must meet God, and you must meet Him on His terms, and you must settle that now!

On Jacob’s end, we see realization and resolution. First, to his realization:

“Then Jacob awoke from his sleep and said, ‘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” (vv. 16-17).

The word יֵשׁ is a primitive particle in Hebrew, a kin to the Greek εἰμι, which Jesus uses to link Himself to the divine Name with ἐγώ εἰμι. So there’s no tense to tell us whether this should be translated as “the LORD was in this place” or “the LORD is,” but IS is clear from the particle that functions as a being verb, such as when He introduced His Name to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM,” which uses the stronger being verb הָיָה. So was this just shocked stuttering in Hebrew on Jacob’s part—e.g., “The LORD … in this place”? This is Jacob meeting God. Jacob realizing that this was God for Him.

Then to his resolution: ‘So early in the morning Jacob 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. He called the name of that place Bethel, but the name of the city was Luz at the first’ (vv. 18-19). This has similarities to the altars set up by Abraham and Isaac. Notice the knowledge he had of the place for anointing oil, that this, in some way, symbolized something of the approval of God over a person or place or thing. But more interesting is the name he gives. It is made of two words in Hebrew. One is for “house” (בֵּית) and the other is the general name for “God” (אֵל). So, “the house of God.” Now, this is not to be confused with where Bethlehem would be to the south—(the “house of bread,” which would also symbolize God’s presence throughout the Scriptures)—nor even with Jerusalem where the main house that God would choose would be.3 So THIS PLACE is less about a permanent physical locale, and more about the house God is making of His people.

A second part to his resolution comes in the form of a vow (In vv. 21-22). I don’t think this is Jacob “bargaining,” as some have thought.4 I think it’s just a growing faith in the form of a conditional statement.

“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, so that I come again to my father’s house in peace, then the LORD shall be my God, and this stone, which I have set up for a pillar, shall be God’s house. And of all that you give me I will give a full tenth to you” (vv. 21-22).

He combines a growing confidence in God with a pledge to devote that portion of his life to God. The choice of a tenth, long before the law of Moses, is interesting. As we saw with Cain’s knowledge of right worship and Noah’s taking of clean and unclean animals, we are reminded that the nature of the moral law is of the nature of creation, of permanent things. I will not say anything specific about the number 10 here. Perhaps someone could. All I need to say is that the portion of one’s wealth, set aside for God, belongs to the permanent nature of reality.

Practical Use of the Doctrine

Use 1. Correction. Do not discount the growing wisdom and godliness in those who have messed up and are learning from that very thing. Rebekah’s words and actions here are more consistently godly and wise than her previous words and actions. To the outside observer, it might look like more of the same. The illusion of influence; the reality of manipulation. But not so!

Here’s what she saw that we need to see as Christians: Sending Christians off after a controversy or division requires that the sender make their blessing known. Short of that, those who receive him or her are left in the dark as to their character, and, as the law of Moses makes plain about the consequences of false witness,5 such an exile (which is what they are now) has been robbed of their abilities to make a living and even make friends.

Use 2. Instruction. Jesus said to Nathanael, “Truly, truly, I say to you, you will see heaven opened, and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man” (Jn. 1:51). Jesus Christ is Jacob’s ladder. It is He that this shadow pointed forward to. In that same Gospel of John, He explains why it matters:

“No one has ascended into heaven except he who descended from heaven, the Son of Man” (Jn. 3:13).

You will recall about the Tower of Babel, that the immediate meaning of the word was “gate of the gods,” so that one of the sins of Babel was the attempt to reverse the curse ourselves, that is, to ascend to heaven on our own strength. Man has always attempted to reconcile God to our terms. So to ask: Why this stairway? Why Jacob’s ladder? This is the same as to ask: Why did God become man? Francis Turretin, in speaking about the two sides of the “God-man” relation, wrote:

“For since to redeem us, two things were most especially required—the acquisition of salvation and the application of the same; the endurance of death for satisfaction and victory over the same for the enjoyment of life—our mediator ought to be God-man (theanthropos) to accomplish these things: man to suffer, God to overcome; man to receive the punishment we deserved, God to endure and drink it to the dregs; man to acquire salvation for us by dying, God to apply it to us by overcoming; man to become ours by the assumption of flesh, God to make us like himself by the bestowal of the Spirit ... Therefore he ought to be between both and like Jacob’s ladder join heaven and earth by a participation of the nature of both.”6

Use 3. Consolation. It was not simply that the LORD was in this place, but that He is, and He will be in all His fullness. From Bethel to Bethlehem. The house of the presence of God. The Lord did not appear to His people only to come and go, like some earthly visitor, and then disappear without a trace. And He doesn’t do that to us. He says, “I will never leave you nor forsake you” (Heb. 13:5).

It is not Isaac and Rebekah that He appeared to now, but to the next generation—to Jacob. And no matter how far Jacob strayed, as He would (as if one man) for centuries to come, the fathers and mothers had this hope.

“But now thus says the LORD, he who created you, O Jacob, he who formed you, O Israel: ‘Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine’” (Isa. 43:2).

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1. Kidner, Genesis, 168

2. Kidner, Genesis, 169.

3. Although the LORD had said [ca. 1400 B.C.], “But you shall seek the place that the LORD your God will choose out of all your tribes to put his name and make his habitation there. There you shall go” (Deut. 12:5), by 930 B.C., Jeroboam I “said to the people, ‘You have gone up to Jerusalem long enough. Behold your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt.’ And he set one in Bethel, and the other he put in Dan” (1 Kings 12:28-29). Surely the pedigree of Bethel in the Jacob story became an argument to justify this rebellion.

4. Kidner notes this interpretation, also rejecting it (Genesis, 169).

5. Deuteronomy 19:15-21, cf. Exodus 20:16, 23:1-3, 6-8, Leviticus 5:1, and Deuteronomy 5:20.

6. Francis Turretin, Institutes, II.13.3.19, 20.