THE HEAVENLY PATHWAY
AND THE EARTHLY HEART
by Alexander Maclaren
'And Jacob went out from Beer-sheba, and went
toward Haran. And he lighted upon a certain place, and tarried there all
night, because the sun was set; and he took of the stones of that place, and
put them for his pillows, 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 above it, and said, I am the Lord 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 in all
places whither thou goest, and will bring thee again 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 dreadful is this
place! this is none other but 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 for his pillows, 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
that city was called Luz at the first. And Jacob vowed 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 raiment to put on, So that I come again to my
father's house in peace; then shall the Lord be my God; And this stone,
which I have set for a pillar, shall be God's house; and of all that Thou
shalt give me I will surely give the tenth unto Thee.' -- GENESIS xxviii.
10-22.
From Abraham to Jacob is a great descent. The
former embodies the
nobler side of the Jewish character,--its capacity
for religious
ideas; its elevation above, and separation from, the
nations; its
consciousness of, and peaceful satisfaction in, a
divine Friend; its
consequent vocation in the world. These all were
deep in the founder
of the race, and flowed to it from him. Jacob, on
the other hand,
has in him the more ignoble qualities, which
Christian treatment of
the Jew has fostered, and which have become
indissolubly attached to
the name in popular usage. He is a crafty schemer,
selfish, over-
reaching, with a keen eye to the main chance.
Whoever deals with him
has to look sharply after his own interests.
Self-advantage in its
most earthly form is uppermost in him; and, like all
timid, selfish
men, shifty ways and evasions are his natural
weapons. The great
interest of his history lies in the slow process by
which the
patient God purified him, and out of this 'stone
raised up a worthy
child to Abraham.' We see in this context the first
step in his
education, and the very imperfect degree in which he
profited by it.
1. Consider the vision and its accompanying promise.
Jacob has fled
from home on account of his nobler brother's fierce
wrath at the
trick which their scheming mother and he had
contrived. It was an
ugly, heartless fraud, a crime against a doting
father, as against
Esau. Rebekah gets alarmed for her favourite; and
her fertile brain
hits upon another device to blind Isaac and get
Jacob out of harm's
way, in the excuse that she cannot bear his marriage
with a Hittite
woman. Her exaggerated expressions of passionate
dislike to 'the
daughters of Heth' have no religious basis. They are
partly feigned
and partly petulance. So the poor old blind father
is beguiled once
more, and sends his son away. Starting under such
auspices, and
coming from such an atmosphere, and journeying back
to Haran, the
hole of the pit whence Abraham had been digged, and
turning his back
on the land where God had been with his house, the
wanderer was not
likely to be cherishing any lofty thoughts. His life
was in danger;
he was alone, a dim future was before him, perhaps
his conscience
was not very comfortable. These things would be in
his mind as he
lay down and gazed into the violet sky so far above
him, burning
with all its stars. Weary, and with a head full of
sordid cares,
plans, and possibly fears, he slept; and then there
flamed on 'that
inward eye, which is the bliss of solitude' to the
pure, and its
terror to the evil, this vision, which speaks indeed
to his then
need, as he discerned it, but reveals to him and to
us the truth
which ennobles all life, burns up the dross of
earthward-turned
aims, and selfish, crafty ways.
We are to conceive of the form of the vision as a
broad stair or
sloping ascent, rather than a ladder, reaching right
from the
sleeper's side to the far-off heaven, its pathway
peopled with
messengers, and its summit touching the place where
a glory shone
that paled even the lustrous constellations of that
pure sky. Jacob
had thought himself alone; the vision peoples the
wilderness. He had
felt himself defenceless; the vision musters armies
for his safety.
He had been grovelling on earth, with no thoughts
beyond its
fleeting goods; the vision lifts his eyes from the
low level on
which they had been gazing. He had been conscious of
but little
connection with heaven; the vision shows him a path
from his very
side right into its depths. He had probably thought
that he was
leaving the presence of his father's God when he
left his father's
tent; the vision burns into his astonished heart the
consciousness
of God as there, in the solitude and the night.
The divine promise is the best commentary on the
meaning of the
vision. The familiar ancestral promise is repeated
to him, and the
blessing and the birthright thus confirmed. In
addition, special
assurances, the translation of the vision into word
and adapted to
his then wants, are given,--God's presence in his
wanderings, his
protection, Jacob's return to the land, and the
promise of God's
persistent presence, working through all paradoxes
of providence and
sins of His servant, and incapable of staying its
operations, or
satisfying God's heart, or vindicating His
faithfulness, at any
point short of complete accomplishment of His
plighted word.
We pass from the lone desert and the mysterious
twilight of Genesis
to the beaten ways between Galilee and Jordan, and
to the clear
historic daylight of the gospel, and we hear Christ
renewing the
promise to the crafty Jacob, to one whom He called a
son of Jacob in
his after better days, 'an Israelite indeed, in whom
is no guile.'
The very heart of Christ's work was unveiled in the
terms of this
vision: From henceforth 'ye shall see the heaven
opened, and the
angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son
of man.' So,
then, the fleeting vision was a transient revelation
of a permanent
reality, and a faint foreshadowing of the true
communication between
heaven and earth. Jesus Christ is the ladder between
God and man. On
Him all divine gifts descend; by Him all the angels
of human
devotion, consecration, and aspiration go up. This
flat earth is not
so far from the topmost heaven as sense thinks. The
despairing
question of Jewish wisdom, 'Who hath ascended up
into heaven, or
descended? ... What is his name, and what is his
son's name, if thou
canst tell?'--which has likewise been the question
of every age that
has not been altogether sunk in sensual delights--is
answered once
for all in the incarnate and crucified and ascended
Lord, by and in
whom all heaven has stooped to earth, that earth
might be lifted to
heaven. Every child of man, though lonely and
earthly, has the
ladder-foot by his side,--like the sunbeam, which
comes straight
into the eyes of every gazer, wherever he stands. It
becomes
increasingly evident, in the controversies of these
days, that there
will remain for modern thought only the
alternative,--either Jesus
Christ is the means of communication between God and
man, or there
is no communication. Deism and theism are
compromises, and cannot
live. The cultivated world in both hemispheres is
being more and
more shut up to either accepting Christ as revealer,
by whom alone
we know, and as medium by whom alone we love and
approach, God; or
sinking into abysses of negations where choke-damp
will stifle
enthusiasm and poetry, as well as devotion and
immortal hope.
Jacob's vision was meant to teach him, and is meant
to teach us, the
nearness of God, and the swift directness of
communication, whereby
His help comes to us and our desires rise to Him.
These and their
kindred truths were to be to him, and should be to
us, the parents
of much nobleness. Here is the secret of elevation
of aim and
thought above the mean things of sense. We all, and
especially the
young, in whose veins the blood dances, and to whom
life is in all
its glory and freshness, are tempted to think of it
as all. It does
us good to have this vision of the eternal realities
blazing in upon
us, even if it seems to glare at us, rather than to
shine with
lambent light. The seen is but a thin veil of the
unseen. Earth,
which we are too apt to make a workshop, or a mere
garden of
pleasure, is a Bethel,--a house of God. Everywhere
the ladder
stands; everywhere the angels go up and down;
everywhere the Face
looks from the top. Nothing will save life from
becoming, sooner or
later, trivial, monotonous, and infinitely
wearisome, but the
continual vision of the present God, and the
continual experience of
the swift ascent and descent of our aspirations and
His blessings.
It is the secret of purity too. How could Jacob
indulge in his
craft, and foul his conscience with sin, as long as
he carried the
memory of what he had seen in the solitary night on
the uplands of
Bethel? The direct result of the vision is the same
command as
Abraham received, 'Walk before Me, and be thou
perfect.' Realise My
presence, and let that kill the motions of sin, and
quicken to
service.
It is also the secret of peace. Hopes and fears, and
dim uncertainty
of the future, no doubt agitated the sleeper's mind
as he laid him
down. His independent life was beginning. He had
just left his
father's tents for the first time; and, though not a
youth in years,
he was in the position which youth holds with us. So
to him, and to
all young persons, here is shown the charm which
will keep the heart
calm, and preserve us from being 'over exquisite to
cast the fashion
of uncertain evils,' or too eagerly longing for
possible good. 'I am
with thee' should be enough to steady our souls; and
the confidence
that God will not leave us till He has accomplished
His own purpose
for us, should make us willing to let Him do as He
will with ours.
2. Notice the imperfect reception of the divine
teaching. Jacob's
startled exclamation on awakening from his dream
indicates a very
low level both of religious knowledge and feeling.
Nor is there any
reason for taking the words in any but their most
natural sense; for
it is a mistake to ascribe to him the knowledge of
God due to later
revelation, or, at this stage of his life, any depth
of religious
emotion. He is alarmed at the thought that God is
near. Probably he
had been accustomed to think of God's presence as in
some special
way associated with his father's encampment, and had
not risen to
the belief of His omnipresence. There seems no
joyous leaping up of
his heart at the thought that God is here. Dread,
not unmingled with
the superstitious fear that he had profaned a holy
place by laying
himself down in it, is his prevailing feeling, and
he pleads
ignorance as the excuse for his sacrilege. He does
not draw the
conclusion from the vision that all the earth is
hallowed by a near
God, but only that he has unwittingly stumbled on
His house; and he
does not learn that from every place there is an
open door for the
loving heart into the calm depths where God is
throned, but only
that _here_ he unwittingly stands at the gate of
heaven. So he
misses the very inner purpose of the vision, and
rather shrinks from
it than welcomes it. Was that spasm of fear all that
passed through
his mind that night? Did he sleep again when the
glory died out of
the heaven? So the story would appear to suggest.
But, in any case,
we see here the effect of the sudden blazing in upon
a heart not yet
familiar with the Divine Friend, of the conviction
that He is really
near. Gracious as God's promise was, it did not
dissipate the
creeping awe at His presence. It is an eloquent
testimony of man's
consciousness of sin, that whensoever a present God
becomes a
reality to a worldly man, he trembles. 'This place'
would not be
'dreadful,' but blessed, if it were not for the
sense of discord
between God and me.
The morning light brought other thoughts, when it
filled the silent
heavens, and where the ladder had stretched, there
was but empty
blue. The lesson is sinking into his mind. He lifts
the rude stone
and pours oil on it, as a symbol of consecration, as
nameless races
have done all over the world. His vow shows that he
had but begun to
learn in God's school. He hedges about his promise
with a
punctilious repetition of God's undertaking, as if
resolved that
there should be no mistake. Clause by clause he goes
over it all,
and puts an 'if' to it. God's word should have
kindled something
liker faith than that. What a fall from 'Abram
believed in the Lord,
and He counted it to him for righteousness'! Jacob
barely believed,
and will wait to see whether all will turn out as it
has been
promised. That is not the glad, swift response of a
loving, trusting
heart. Nor is he contented with repeating to God the
terms of his
engagement, but he adds a couple of clauses which
strike him as
being important, and as having been omitted. There
was nothing about
'bread to eat, and raiment to put on,' nor about
coming back again
'in peace,' so he adds these. A true 'Jew,'--great
at a bargain, and
determined to get all he can, and to have no mistake
about what he
must get before he gives anything! Was Jesus
thinking at all of the
ancestor when He warned the descendants, in words
which sound
curiously like an echo of Jacob's, not to be anxious
'what ye shall
eat,' nor 'what ye shall put on'? As the vow stands
in the
Authorised Version, it is farther open to the charge
of suspending
his worship of God upon the fulfilment of these
conditions; but it
is better to adopt the marginal rendering of the
Revised Version,
according to which the clause 'then shall the Lord
be my God' is a
part of the conditions, not of the vow, and is to be
read 'And [if]
the Lord will be ... then this stone ... shall be,'
etc. If this
rendering be adopted, as I think it should be, the
vow proper is
simply of outward service,--he will rear an altar,
and he will tithe
his substance. Not a very munificent pledge! And
where in it is the
surrender of the heart? Where is the outgoing of
love and gratitude?
Where the clasping of the hand of his heavenly
Friend with calm
rapture of thankful self-yielding, and steadfastness
of implicit
trust? God did not want Jacob's altar, nor his
tenths; He wanted
Jacob. But many a weary year and many a sore sorrow
have to leave
their marks on him before the evil strain is pressed
out of his
blood; and by the unwearied long-suffering of his
patient Friend and
Teacher in heaven, the crafty, earthly-minded Jacob
'the supplanter'
is turned into 'Israel, the prince with God, in whom
is no guile.'
The slower the scholar, the more wonderful the
forbearance of the
Teacher; and the more may we, who are slow scholars
too, take heart
to believe that He will not be soon angry with us,
nor leave us
until He has done that which He has spoken to us of.
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