Climbing Jacob’s Ladder: A 6-Step Study of Genesis 28:10-22

When I think of “Jacob’s Ladder” my first thought still goes to the year 1986; where an 11-year-old (me) was listening to one of his favorite songs by Huey Lewis and The News. Flash back with me:

“Jacob’s Ladder” climbed to the top of the Billboard 100 chart by 1987. Many of the lyrics in the chorus were mumbled in the big-band hit, except for the first part of it:

“Step by step, one by one, higher and higher

Step by step…”

Many of things talked about in the verses I didn’t really understand as a kid either, like:

“I met a fan dancer
Down in South Side Birmingham
She was running from a fat man
Selling salvation in his hand…”  

I know now that it is a song about rejecting evangelists, but as that 11-year-old, it was just a cool hit, and I had no clue that it touched on one of the most prominent stories in the Old Testament. Step by step, we are going to break down that story; one by one, we are going to take six rungs to the top and tackle a big dream Jacob had about a ladder and God’s plan for him.

            Like the song, the first couple of verses of Genesis 28:10-11 can be hard to understand if you don’t know the background story. Jacob had stolen Esau’s blessing from their father, Isaac, at the behest of Rebecca, his mother, because she liked him best (Gen. 25:28). Chapter 28 picks up after Jacob was blessed by his father (deceived that he was Esau) and was told to “Arise, go to Paddan-aram, to the house of Bethuel your mother’s father” (Gen. 28:2; Grandpa’s house, essentially), take a wife and be “fruitful and multiply” (28:3). Part of the crisis in this story is that as Jacob left the household, he was threatened by his brother’s act of wanting to kill him for Jacob’s treachery (27:42), which was the main reason Jacob was being sent away.   

            Great start, right? Steal the blessing, brother wants you dead, and father is stressed knowing he gave the blessing to the wrong kid. I would want to run away for a while too, I think. So, these first two verses are about Jacob’s journey. A journey is all about steps. Earlier in Genesis 12, God told Abram to take a journey too; a journey he really did not know anything about:

“Go forth from your country,

And from your relatives

And from your father’s house,

To the land which I will show you;”

Every journey we take with God is about steps. Humankind has even adopted the phrase, “stepping out in faith.” Jacob was doing a similar move here. Even though his parents told him to split town, God’s plan was set in motion, and Jacob encountered his ladder. At this point, Jacob went to sleep in “a certain place” on his way to Heran. That was step one. Follow my blog as "Step Two" will involve dreaming big about what the future holds for him.