GENESIS XXVIII:10-XXXII:3
A STAIRWAY TO HEAVEN
Esav (Esau) wants revenge because Yaakov, his twin brother, snatched his father’s blessing from him. To avoid a tragedy, at the urging of his mother, Yaakov decides to leave his father’s home and go into exile. But Yaakov would not only leave his father’s house: he would leave the Promised Land, a fate for which his grandfather Avraham had renounced the house of his father Terach.
This new situation required a different nomenclature: the Diaspora. Yaakov remained outside his father’s environment for twenty years and was infected by the wiles of his uncle Lavan, who gave him shelter and offered him his two daughters in marriage. Yaakov created the concept of the Diaspora becausehe would spend the last years of his life in Egypt, in the land of Goshen that was ceded by Pharaoh to the Hebrews. A very fertile land but, at the same time, it was a kind of golden ghetto, because it was the only place where Jews could reside.
Yaakov’s dreams would now be different from the famous dream described in our chapters, in which he had a vision of a ladder linking heaven and earth and by which the angels of God ascended and descended. A dream that has been much commented on and explained, because the image of the staircase alludes to a connection between the heavenly and the earthly, which are not exclusive or opposite spaces. According to the dream, a bridge can be built that unites them, a “ladder” by which the person can rise spiritually from the earth on his feet and reach heaven itself.
Why did the angels go up and down the ladder? A suggestive explanation is that they wanted to compare the heavenly Yaakovwith the earthly one. Apparently, each person has a double, a figure that represents the potential of the person in heaven and the angels wished to check if Yaakov had reached his potential. The moral is that each person has a greater potential, a horizon, an ideal to achieve. An alternative explanation might be that heavenly reality is different from earthly reality because human knowledge is limited when compared to the infinite intellect of God at the head of the ladder in Yaakov’s dream.
Human reasoning cannot explain certain phenomena and understand the ultimate purpose of some events. But, on the other hand, it can be perfected. Reflection and continuous study can deepen the understanding to bring one ever closer tocertainty and absolute truth represented by the heavenly understanding. The nature of the ladder, which is composed of rungs, implies that spiritual perfection is progressive: one can spiritually “climb” “rung by rung.”
Even God’s angels descend, as a reflection of the human condition, which has ups and downs. Since celestial beings respond to human behavior, man must become aware of the transcendence of his behavior, because it has an echo beyond his person. One cannot help but think that this idea is imbued with a narcissistic thought that places man at the center of the universe, as if his behavior could alter the Divine plan of creation.
Reading some of the arguments found in the Book of Iyov (Job) directly challenges this idea, which presupposes that an insignificant creature like man can determine God’s purpose in the act of creation. The ladder that rested on the earth and reached the heavens also teaches that man must have his feet firmly planted on the earth. Earthly events cannot be ignored, and it is a mistake to minimize the value of everyday events and manifestations of physical matter for exclusive spiritual dedication.
On the one hand, man was made from the dust of the earth, while from another point of view, God invited Avraham to raise his eyes to the stars in the firmament. Man is a synthesis of matter and spirit, a fact that implies a duality and a basic conflict whose progressive resolution allows evolution and development, both in the physical and in the emotional and spiritual fields.
