Beresheet (Genesis) 28:10-32:3
Our weekly reading brings us to one of the most famous dreams found in the Bible—Jacob’s dream:
Then Jacob departed from Beersheba and went toward Haran. And he came to a certain place and spent the night there, because the sun had set; and he took one of the stones of the place and put it under his head, and lay down in that place. And he had a dream, and behold, a ladder was set on the earth with its top reaching to heaven; and behold, the angels of God were ascending and descending on it. And behold, the LORD stood above it and said, “I am the LORD, the God of your father Abraham and the God of Isaac; the land on which you lie, I will give it to you and to your descendants. “Your descendants shall also be like the dust of the earth, and you shall spread out to the west and to the east and to the north and to the south; and in you and in your Seed shall all the families of the earth be blessed. “And 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. 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.” (Genesis 28:10–17)
Jacob’s dream is so rich and much can be (and has been) written on it. One of the most important parts of this dream that I would like to point out (which is directly related to this series of blogs on the “Mystery Found in the Word of God”) has to do with God affirming, once again, His unconditional covenant to Abraham, Isaac and now here, to Jacob. This covenant included a land, but also a promise that through their (Abraham, Isaac, & Jacob’s) seed, “…shall all the families of the earth be blessed.” This echoes the same promise found in Genesis 12:3: “And in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”
As I previously wrote in earlier blogs, Rav Shaul (the Apostle Paul) referred to this promise when he wrote: “Now the promises were spoken to Abraham and to his seed. He does not say, “And to seeds,” as referring to many, but rather to one, “And to your seed,” that is, Messiah.” (Galatians 3:16)
Through God’s promise to Abraham, we can clearly see how He points to Messiah Yeshua! Through His promise, we also find evidence of God’s endless love for us, in that He provided a way for us to return to Him through the Seed of blessing—Messiah Yeshua—from the very beginning of time.
It is not by mistake that right after the Lord reiterated this amazing promise to Jacob, he woke up from the dream and said, “Surely the Lord is in this place, and I did not know it…How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.” Even today, a condition to “wake up” from our “spiritual sleep” is to accept the truth of the “Seed of promise”, which is our Messiah. We cannot fully experience the presence of God Almighty without Messiah, as He is our entrance to the Kingdom (John 14:6).
As a final thought, I’d like to remind you of what I wrote in a previous blog, “Parashat Beresheet: In the Beginning”. I wrote about the incredible discovery I made in the “Targum Onkelos” (the ancient Aramaic translation of the Torah) in which Genesis 3:8 is written: “And they heard the voice of the Word of God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God among the trees of the garden.” (emphasis mine) Who is the Word of God? Yeshua, His Son, our Messiah! And we find this again in our reading in the same ancient translation of verse 28:21, “…and I return to my father’s house in safety, then the Word will be my God.”
I marvel at the consistency of the Lord in the Scriptures, but also in our lives! He is ONE and He does not contradict Himself. Let us never forget that the only way to return to our Father’s house is through faith in His Word, Yeshua, our promised Messiah.
Shabbat Shalom,
Moran