3656. Genesis 28

1. And Isaac called to Jacob and blessed him and commanded him and said to him, “You shall not take a woman from the daughters of Canaan.

2. Get up; go to Paddan-aram, to the house of Bethuel, your mother’s father, and take yourself from there a woman from the daughters of Laban your mother’s brother.

3. And God Shaddai will bless you and make you fruitful and multiply you, and you will become a throng of peoples.

4. And he will give you the blessing of Abraham—you and your seed with you—so that you inherit the land of your immigrant journeys, which God gave Abraham.”

5. And Isaac sent Jacob, and he went to Paddan-aram, to Laban, son of Bethuel the Aramean, brother of Rebekah, Jacob and Esau’s mother.

6. And Esau saw that Isaac had blessed Jacob and sent him to Paddan-aram to take himself a woman from there (when [Isaac] blessed him) and had commanded him, saying, “You shall not take a woman from the daughters of Canaan,”

7. and [that] Jacob listened to his father and to his mother and went to Paddan-aram.

8. And Esau saw that the daughters of Canaan were bad in the eyes of Isaac his father.

9. And Esau went to Ishmael and took Mahalath, daughter of Ishmael (son of Abraham), sister of Nebaioth—in addition to his women—to himself as his woman.

10. And Jacob went out from Beer-sheba and went to Haran.

11. And he happened on a place and spent the night there because the sun went down, and he took one of the stones of the place and put it as his headrest and lay down in that place.

12. And he dreamed. And look: a ladder resting on the earth, and its head reaching the sky, and look: God’s angels going up and going down on it!

13. And look: Jehovah standing above it; and he said, “I am Jehovah, God of Abraham your father and God of Isaac; the land that you are lying on, to you I will give it and to your seed.

14. And your seed will be like the dust of the earth, and you will burst out toward the sea and toward the east and toward the north and toward the south. And in you all the clans of the ground will be blessed, and in your seed.

15. And look: I am with you and will guard you in every [place] where you go and will bring you back to this ground, because I will not abandon you until I have done what I spoke to you.”

16. And Jacob woke from his sleep and said, “Surely Jehovah is in this place and I didn’t know.”

17. And he was afraid and said, “How frightening this place is! This is nothing but the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.”

18. And Jacob got up early in the morning and took the stone that he had put as his headrest and put it as a pillar and poured oil on its head.

19. And he called the name of that place Bethel. And certainly Luz had been the name of the city earlier.

20. And Jacob vowed a vow, saying, “If God is with me and guards me on this way that I am walking and gives me bread to eat and clothing to wear, and I return in peace to the house of my father, Jehovah will become my God.

21. And this stone that I have put as a pillar will be the house of God, and everything that you give me, I will make sure to tithe it to you.”

Summary

IN the highest sense the theme here is the way the Lord started to make the truth and the goodness in his earthly level divine. The means are depicted in a general way. In a representative sense, though, the theme is the way the Lord regenerates or remakes the truth and the goodness of a person’s earthly level. Again the process is dealt with in a general way (verses 1-10).