Genesis 28:12 - Exposition

And he dreamed . This dream, which has been pronounced "beautifully ingenious," "clever" and "philosophical," the work of a later Hebrew poet and not of Jacob (De Wette), was not wonderful considering the state of mind and body in which he must have been—fatigued by travel, saddened by thoughts of home, doubtless meditating on his mother, and more than likely pondering the great benediction of his aged and, to all appearance, dying father. Yet while these circumstances may account for the mental framework of the dream, the dream itself was Divinely sent. And behold a ladder —the rough stones of the mountain appearing to form themselves into vast staircase (Stanley, Bush)— set up an the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven:— symbolically intimating the fact of a real, uninterrupted, and close communication between heaven and earth, and in particular between God in his glory and man in his solitude and sin— and behold the angels of God —literally , the messengers of Elohim , i .e. the angels ( Psalms 103:20 , Psalms 103:21 ; Psalms 104:4 ; Hebrews 1:14 )— ascending and descending on it — vide John 1:51 , which shows that Christ regarded either the ladder in Jacob's vision as an emblem of himself, the one Mediator between God and man (Calvin, Luther, Ainsworth, 'Speaker's Commentary,' Murphy), or, what is more probable, Jacob himself as type of him, the Son of man, in whom the living intercourse between earth and heaven depicted in the vision of the angel-trodden staircase was completely fulfilled (Hengstenberg, Baumgsrten, Lange, Bush).