And Jacob awaked out of his sleep, and he said, Surely the Lord is in this place; and I knew it not.- Gen_28:16.
1. Driven from his home by the threats of Esau, by the fears of Rebekah, by the commands of Isaac, Jacob sets forth on the long and dangerous journey from Beersheba to Haran. Perhaps we are scarcely able to judge of the sorrowful feelings which this banishment would beget in his soul. Here we go from one Christian home to another. If we leave the parental roof we may hope still to sojourn where there is an altar to the Most High God, and where we can still unite with worshippers who fear His Name. Not so in Jacob's case. The family of which he was a member was the only household in the land that worshipped God; or if there were some few others probably they were unknown to one another, and, as far as Jacob's knowledge would go, he was fully assured that all the way from the place where he left his father until he arrived at Padan-aram he would not meet with a single person who feared the God of heaven. He was passing from one oasis to another across a burning sand. So in leaving his father's house there may have been this troublous thought rising in his mind, that he was also leaving his father's God; that now his prayers would scarcely be heard; that he should be an alien from Jehovah's land, and cut off from the congregation of the blessed.
Home is the first and most important school of character. It is there that every human being receives his best moral training or his worst; for it is there that he imbibes those principles of conduct which endure through manhood, and cease only with life. It is a common saying that “Manners make the man”; and there is a second, “Mind makes the man”; but truer than either is a third, that “Home makes the man,” for the home-training includes not only manners and mind, but character. It is mainly in the home that the heart is opened, the habits are formed, the intellect is awakened, and character moulded for good or for evil.1 [Note: S. Smiles, Character, 31.]
2. As Jacob journeyed northwards, he came, on the second or third evening of his flight, to the hills of Bethel. As the sun was sinking he found himself toiling up the rough path which Abraham may have described to him as looking like a great staircase of rock and crag reaching from earth to sky. Slabs of rock, piled one upon another, form the whole hillside; and to Jacob's eye, accustomed to the rolling pastures of Beersheba, they would appear almost like a structure built for superhuman uses, well founded in the valley below, and intended to reach to unknown heights. Overtaken by darkness on this rugged path, he readily finds as soft a bed and as good shelter as his shepherd habits require, and with his head on a stone and a corner of his dress thrown over his face to preserve him from the moon, he is soon fast asleep. But in his dreams the massive staircase is still before his eyes, and it is no longer himself that is toiling up it as it leads to an unexplored hilltop above him, but the angels of God are ascending and descending upon it, and at its top is Jehovah Himself.
Jacob had probably lain down without any thought of God. Perhaps he thought-like Jonah nearly a thousand years later-that he had fled from the presence of the Lord. For he was a fugitive, and he knew it. His old blind father whom he had deceived might not know it. Rebekah had sown the seeds of fear in Isaac's mind concerning the possibility of Jacob's contracting a heathen marriage, the seeds had germinated, and Isaac had dismissed him to go and seek a wife among his mother's kinsfolk, and had sent him away with a reiterated blessing. But Jacob knew, and Rebekah knew, that he was going because he was compelled to go, and because the home was no longer wide enough for the two brothers. He did not know, he did not realize, that the God of Abraham to whom his mother prayed was there and would be everywhere, and in his dream it became clear to him.
“As often as you can in the course of the day, recall your spirit into the presence of God,” writes St. Francis of Sales in his meditations on the Devout Life. In the noise and confusion of the visible, one needs constantly to take refuge in the invisible. We are always in the presence of God; to find that presence we do not need to seek the silence of the desert or the monastery; we need only to remember that we are in His presence, and to recall our spirits to the consciousness that wherever we are, there is God also. To give his deep counsel greater definiteness, the great Bishop of Geneva adds these striking words: “Remember, then, to make occasional retreat into the solitudes of your heart, whilst outwardly engaged in business or conversation. This mental solitude cannot be prevented by the multitude of those who are about you, for they are not about your heart, but about your body; so your heart may remain above, in the presence of God alone.”1 [Note: H. W. Mabie, The Life of the Spirit, 138.]
3. The dream is vividly described. The rocky hilltop, the stony slabs over which he has dragged his feet, become a glorified stairway reaching from earth to heaven. Celestial messengers are on it, coming and returning, and the voice to which Abraham was accustomed to listen in the night-time was speaking to him. It was one of the great moments in the history of this strange man, a dream whose memory and influence never left him, which you may be sure he told to his children, and especially to Joseph. We can imagine how great must have been his astonishment when the revelation of God came to him in a pagan sanctuary; when, far away from the sacred places of Beersheba, among the lonely desert hills of Ephraim, the visionary ladder connected heaven with this temple of the sun, and claimed it to be a sacred shrine of God.
Wonderful as was the sight, almost more wonderful were the words heard by Jacob: “I am the Lord God of Abraham.” “In thee and in thy seed shall all the families of the earth be blessed.” “I am with thee, and will keep with thee in all places whither thou goest.” He was shown the past and the future, the things of eternity and those of time, all in one. He saw earth and heaven in one. He heard the bygone generations of his race, himself, and all the distant families of men that were yet to come, linked in one.
We may regard Jacob's first words on awaking as disclosing to us the true nature of his dream. It was a revelation of God: “Surely the Lord is in this place.” But it was a revelation that startled him into a new consciousness-“Surely the Lord is in this place; and I knew it not.” It was the beginning of a new life. Fear followed on surprise. That passion was inherent in Jacob's character, and it was that which spoilt the man in his early time. It made him underhand, desirous to soften every one with presents; it made his life often wretched in Canaan, and his faith of such slow growth. But Jacob had the stuff of a man in him. He had power of will over his fear; he could subdue it for the sake of success; it never prevented him from following up his point, and by and by he learnt how to lift fear into veneration of God.
Jacob has heard no word of upbraiding or threatening. Yet he feels how awful it is to be near God, how dreadful to have a heavenly searchlight flashed into his soul. He is penetrated with holy fear, abashed by the pure splendour of the Divine. That does not mean that he wishes for a moment to escape from God. He would not for a world have spent this night anywhere but just where he has spent it; and he would not for a ransom be anywhere now but just where he is. This spot will always be in his memory the dearest on earth, this night better than a thousand. But while he rejoices he trembles. No sinful man can be in the presence of God without fear. That sense of awe-we may feel it alone on a bare moorland under the stars, or in a great temple among a multitude of worshippers, or in an upper room where two or three friends are gathered together. But, when it comes to us, there is no mistaking it, for that reverential feeling is different from any other emotion that ever visits the human heart.1 [Note: J. Strachan, Hebrew Ideals, ii. 45.]
4. Jacob responded to this marvellous vision. He was overawed and afraid; but his nature was awakened by the vision, and it replied to God's drawing of him. He vowed a vow that Jehovah should be his God. He made a resolution. He gathered himself up, and resolutely determined. He did not, as we often do, when melted or awed by the vision of God in Christ, allow the effect to wear off, doing nothing. He came to a decision. Religion needs this both at the beginning and all through. No man ever found himself, by accident or good fortune, in the kingdom of heaven. “As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.” But he did more. He vowed a vow; and he also set up a stone. He made the inner resolution; and, having taken it, he also set to it this strange outward seal. He left there, for all men to see, a monument of his having met with God.
But even here a worldly, selfish element seems to mingle with his pious devotion. His solemn vow of allegiance to the God of his fathers is strangely conditioned on his future prosperity. Still, we are not disposed to question the sincerity of his vow, and his determination, from that memorable experience at Bethel, to acknowledge and serve the God of Abraham and Isaac. He stood now on the threshold of a “new departure.” He was to begin now a new and untried life. His life thus far had been a strange and a mixed life. The future was full of anxiety. God had just called him to a wonderful experience. And under all these circumstances, after a night of wondrous vision, he rises up early in the morning and sets up a pillar as a memorial, and records a solemn vow, binding him to fidelity and service “to the Lord God of Abraham his father.” It was a fitting service, a right start in his new course.
It was at the beginning of these somewhat reckless years that I came to the great decision of my life. I remember it well. Our Sunday-school class had been held in the vestry as usual. The lesson was finished, and we had marched back into the chapel to sing, answer questions, and to listen to a short address. I was sitting at the head of the seat, and can even now see Mr. Meikle taking from his breast-pocket a copy of the United Presbyterian Record, and hear him say that he was going to read an interesting letter to us from a missionary in Fiji. The letter was read. It spoke of cannibalism, and of the power of the Gospel; and at the close of the reading, looking over his spectacles, and with wet eyes, he said, “I wonder if there is a boy here this afternoon who will yet become a missionary, and by and by bring the Gospel to cannibals?” And the response of my heart was, “Yes, God helping me, and I will.” So impressed was I that I spoke to no one, but went right away towards home. The impression became greater the further I went, until I got to the bridge over the Aray above the mill and near to the Black Bull. There I went over the wall attached to the bridge, and kneeling down prayed God to accept of me, and to make me a missionary to the heathen.1 [Note: James Chalmers: Autobiography and Letters (by R. Lovett), 23.]
5. Jacob's vision bore its fruits. For twenty years it lay dormant; it was revived at Peniel; it rose and fell, and rose and fell again during his long life in Canaan; but it broke out, undecayed, into full radiance in Egypt, where, rejoicing in the vast growth of his house, he looked forward with faith, self wholly forgotten in the vision, through the mist of death and of the future, to prophesy the glory of his nation in the promised land. It took him seventy years to realize the full meaning of this vision on the hill, but he did realize it at last; not only that part which belonged to earth, but also that which belonged to himself and God. It is beautiful to hear him recall it as he did with undiminished memory. “And Jacob said unto Joseph, God Almighty appeared unto me at Luz in the land of Canaan, and blessed me, and said unto me, Behold, I will make thee fruitful, and a multitude of people; and will give this land to thy seed after thee for an everlasting possession.” See how the memory of the first revelation pervades his dying utterance as with a long-preserved perfume; how vividly we recognize in the words that the vision on the hill had ruled and guided his whole life!
There is little fear that God will hide Himself longer than is necessary from a soul that seeks to walk consciously in the light of His Presence. But the visible too often crowds out the invisible. Too often we forget that God is with us; then we are weak in temptation, because relying on our own strength instead of looking to Him for help. And yet we reach out with a real heart-hunger for that Infinite Love. Perhaps the last waking thought at night is the sweet peace of resting on the Divine Heart, without a shadow of care-like the good soldier of Christ who lately fell asleep murmuring “Holy, Holy, Holy.” Perhaps our first waking thought may be the joy of being in the service of the Master of the World. But what of the hours when we are immersed in the work or pleasure of the Day, do we always walk with God joyously and bravely? Do we not often forget His very existence, and act or speak or think as though we had no Heavenly Father, no Master to lean on and to obey? Even though the great Vision may be only seen indistinctly, still it has wonderful power to help and strengthen a soul that is bent on climbing, a soul that longs to reflect the beauty of holiness, which makes the Face of the King so wondrously attractive.1 [Note: Dora Farncomb, The Vision of His Face, 4.]
Up here the air was fresh and invigorating. I followed the stream to its secret fastness, where it brimmed a tiny pool, all cushioned round by exquisite soft water-mosses, out of which pricked the strong spikes of the golden hill-asphodel, the loveliest of mountain-loving flowers. There I ate and drank, and like the elders in the mount, I saw God. Yes, I saw Him, felt Him, rested under His great hand, breathed His patient influence. It all came on me in a moment, and in a moment it was gone, before the drop that trembled at the pool edge could globe itself and drip upon the stones below. I was in His presence, a spirit so old, and wise, and great, that I knew for an instant how foolish and childish it is to wonder, or to grieve, or to complain, because His laws are so august and so tremendous that one must rejoice with all one's frail heart that one is ruled by them; whose tenderness is so perfect and all-embracing that there is no room to doubt or fret; who, if He seems to be severe or indifferent, is so only because He has waited so long and has so long to wait; who has suffered and endured and grieved so much that pain and sorrow is no more to Him than the fleeting shadow of a bird, flying over a field of golden wheat; and whose design is so vast, so incredibly joyful, so speechlessly serene, that the doubts and griefs and sorrows of all the men and women that have ever lived are but as the trivial ripple on a mighty ocean of peace. That was the vision; and there came on me such a sense of hope and eager expectation and far-reaching love that I felt utterly swallowed up and enfolded in it, as a drop of wandering water that sinks into the bosom of the sleeping lake.1 [Note: A. C. Benson, Thy Rod and Thy Staff, 203.]
