Vayetzei: HaMakom

(10) Jacob left Beer-sheba, and set out for Haran.(11) He came upon a certain placeand stopped there for the night, for the sun had set. Taking one of the stones of that place, he put it under his head and lay down in that place.(12) He had a dream; a stairway was set on the ground and its top reached to the sky, and angels of God were going up and down on it.(13) And the LORD was standing beside him and He said, “I am the LORD, the God of your father Abraham and the God of Isaac: the ground on which you are lying I will assign to you and to your offspring.

(14) Your descendants shall be as the dust of the earth; you shall spread out to the west and to the east, to the north and to the south. All the families of the earth shall bless themselves by you and your descendants.(15) Remember, I am with you: I will protect you wherever you go and will bring you back to this land. I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.”(16) Jacob awoke from his sleep and said, “Surely the LORD is present in this place, and I did not know it!”(17)Shaken, he said, “How awesome is this place! This is none other than the abode of God, and that is the gateway to heaven.”

(18) Early in the morning, Jacob took the stone that he had put under his head and set it up as a pillar and poured oil on the top of it.(19) He named that site Bethel; but previously the name of the city had been Luz.(20) Jacob then made a vow, saying, “If God remains with me, if He protects me on this journey that I am making, and gives me bread to eat and clothing to wear,(21) and if I return safe to my father’s house—the LORD shall be my God.(22) And this stone, which I have set up as a pillar, shall be God’s abode; and of all that You give me, I will set aside a tithe for You.”

(12) He had a dream; a stairway was set on the ground and its top reached to the sky, and angels of God were going up and down on it.(13) And the LORD was standing beside him and He said, “I am the LORD, the God of your father Abraham and the God of Isaac: the ground on which you are lying I will assign to you and to your offspring.(14) Your descendants shall be as the dust of the earth; you shall spread out to the west and to the east, to the north and to the south. All the families of the earth shall bless themselves by you and your descendants.(15) Remember, I am with you: I will protect you wherever you go and will bring you back to this land. I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.”(16) Jacob awoke from his sleep and said, “Surely the LORD is present in this place, and I did not know it!”(17) Shaken, he said, “How awesome is this place! This is none other than the abode of God, and that is the gateway to heaven.”

ויפגע במקום AND HE LIGHTED UPON THE PLACE — Scripture does not mention which place, but by writing בַּמָקוֹם the place it refers to the place mentioned already in another passage, viz., Mount Moriah of which it is stated (Genesis 22:4) “And he saw the place (המקום) afar off”.

ויקח מאבני המקום, “he took some of the stones lying around on that place” (to make some kind of headrest for himself). According to tradition these stones had been part of the altar on which his father Yitzchok had been bound on the occasion of the Akeydah.

It is common for a sulam (ramp, ladder) to be a symbol, or it is the same numerical value as "Sinai."

Rabbi Shlomo from Spain said that a ladder is a hint about the higher soul, and the mal'achim of God are thoughts of wisdom.

And Rabbi Yeshua said that the reason for a ladder is that prayers go up it, and God's salvation comes down from the heavens...

...And it is also written: and other messengers go down to fulfill their divine tasks, like a king and his servants.

Going up and down - Going up first and afterwards down; angels who accompany him in the land do not leave the land, but go up to the sky, and angels from outside the land go down to accompany him.

(3) Whenever this term is applied to God it must be understood in the latter sense, as, "And, behold, the Lord stood (niẓẓab) upon it" (Gen. 28:13), i.e., appeared as eternal and everlasting "upon it," namely, upon the ladder, the upper end of which reached to heaven, while the lower end touched the earth. This ladder all may climb up who wish to do so, and they must ultimately attain to a knowledge of Him who is above the summit of the ladder, because He remains upon it permanently. It must be well understood that the term "upon it" is employed by me in harmony with this metaphor. The phrase "stood upon it" indicates the permanence and constancy of God, and does not imply the idea of physical position. This is also the sense of the phrase "Thou shalt stand upon the rock" (Exod. 33:21). It is therefore clear that niẓẓab and ‘amad are identical in this figurative signification. Comp. "Behold, I will stand (‘omed) before thee there upon the rock in Horeb" (Exod. 17:6).

How suggestive, too, is the expression "ascending and descending on it"! The ascent is mentioned before the descent, inasmuch as the "ascending" and arriving at a certain height of the ladder precedes the "descending," i.e., the application of the knowledge acquired in the ascent for the training and instruction of mankind. This application is termed "descent," in accordance with our explanation of the term yarad (chapter x.).

(4) To return to our subject.

דברתי לך means I have spoken in thy interest and concerning thee: whatever I promised to Abraham regarding his seed it was in reference to you that I promised it and not in reference to Esau, for I did not say to him “Isaac shall be called thy seed” (which would have signified that all Isaac’s descendants would be regarded, also, as Abraham’s) but I said (21:12) ביצחק “In Isaac” and not all the issue of Isaac”. In the same way wherever לי or לך or לו or להם are used after a verbal form of דבר, they are used in the sense of “concerning”. This verse proves that this is so, since it cannot mean “I have spoken to thee” as He had never spoken to Jacob before this occasion.

אכן יש יהוה במקום הזה, there can be no question that this is a location from where the gift of prophetic insights is dispensed, seeing that I have been granted such an insight without even having expected it or prepared myself for it spiritually. It is a fact that the characteristics of a person undergo changes in the land of Israel just as the climate and very air in this country are different, contribute to one’s mental and spiritual progress. Our sages have phrased this (Baba Batra 158) as “the very air of the Land of Israel makes one wiser.”

ואנכי לא ידעתי, if I had known that this was a holy site I would not have chosen this site to sleep on. It is possible that this dream represented the beginning of Yaakov’s prophetic visions. This is why he had not been aware of the sanctity of the site until after his dream, seeing that this was the first time G’d had revealed Himself to him in any manner.

ואנכי לא ידעתי AND I KNEW IT NOT — for had I known it I would not have slept in such a holy place as this.

ואנכי לא ידעתי, if I had known that this was a holy site I would not have chosen this site to sleep on. It is possible that this dream represented the beginning of Yaakov’s prophetic visions. This is why he had not been aware of the sanctity of the site until after his dream, seeing that this was the first time G’d had revealed Himself to him in any manner.

When Jacob said: יש השם במקום הזה, that G'd is in this place, he meant that G'd is present at this site all the time, in contrast to other sites. This is why G'd wanted him to spend the night there in order to communicate with him there. Jacob apologised for not having prepared himself for a divine revelation; had he been aware of the significance of that site he would surely have done so. Prophecy requires the recipient to first prepare himself mentally. Perhaps if Jacob had prepared himself to become the recipient of a message from G'd he might have prophesied while awake instead of while dreaming. This may have been what he bemoaned in this verse. Rashi explains simply that Jacob meant that if he had known the holy nature of that site he would not have allowed himself to go to sleep there. If that were the only meaning of Jacob's words we could say to him (Rashi) that Jacob then would not have experienced all the promises G'd made to him during his dream. We therefore need to include what I have just written in order to explain the verse satisfactorily.

Perhaps we may explain this by referring to Chulin 91 where the words "for the sun had set" are interpreted to mean that Jacob personally experienced an unusually early sunset on that day. This was designed to force him to spend the night at that site. What Jacob meant then was that at the time when the early sunset occurred he had not understood its meaning. He did so now only with the help of the dream he had dreamt.