The Story Develops; Conflict Abounds 
The lectionary jumps over two chapters, from Jacob tricking Esau out of his birthright to Jacob cheating Esau out of his father’s death-bed blessing.  

Chapter 26 tells the story of Isaac establishing a place for his family as an alien in a land so hostile, he is afraid to claim Rebekah as his wife. Because of her beauty and his lack of power, he is afraid he will be murdered so she can be taken as the wife of another. He negotiates with the Philistine King, Abimelech. He establishes a place for his family, digging wells and prospering.

Chapter 26 ends foreshadowing what is to come:

When Esau was forty years old, he married Judith daughter of Beeri the Hittite, and Basemath daughter of Elon the Hittite; and they made life bitter for Isaac and Rebekah.  26:34-35

Old and dying, too blind to distinguish one son from the other, Isaac calls for Esau. He sends him out to hunt game, cook it, and bring it to him. His intention is to eat one last meal with Esau to give him his final blessing.

Rebekah overhears this conversation, and prepares to trick Isaac into blessing Jacob rather than Esau.

She sends Jacob out to get choice kids from the flock, and prepares Isaac’s favorite meal. She dresses Jacob in Esau’s clothes and puts the skins of the kids on his arms, so he feels as hairy as Esau.

When Jacob goes into Isaac, Isaac smells him, feels his clothes, he believes Jacob is Esau, and so gives Esau’s blessing to Jacob.  

When Esau discovers he has been cheated out of his father’s blessings, he swears vengeance:

Now Esau hated Jacob because of the blessing with which his father had blessed him, and Esau said to himself, ‘The days of mourning for my father are approaching; then I will kill my brother Jacob.’ 27:41

Word of Esau’s plan to kill Jacob reaches Rebekah, and she again intervenes:

…so she sent and called her younger son Jacob and said to him, ‘Your brother Esau is consoling himself by planning to kill you. Now therefore, my son, obey my voice; flee at once to my brother Laban in Haran …27:42b-44a.

Rebekah then goes to Isaac and tells him that they have already suffered enough because of the Hittite wives Esau has married. The bitter experience they have shared at the hands of these wives Isaac to send Jacob away, back to Rebekah’s home to find a wife there among their people (thus, Laban reenters the story with surprising results ahead).

To end the chapter, out of spite and revenge, rejecting his own family, Esau goes Ishmael, and takes a third wife:

Esau went to Ishmael and took Mahalath daughter of Abraham’s son Ishmael, and sister of Nebaioth, to be his wife in addition to the wives he had. 28:9

Thus the stage is set for the story of Jacob fleeing home and finding himself as isolated as any human can be. He is exiled from his family by his own doing.  Will not be home to bury his father, and will never again see his beloved mother.  His brother Esau, a fearsome and powerful character,  has sworn to kill him.  We might well imagine he wishes he could go back an undo what he has done; he has no idea what lies ahead of him, what his reputation will mean when he arrives in Rebekah’s home.

Jacob’s Ladder
Two points of clarification for modern readers.

First, our English transition of ladder is unfortunate, as we imagine it to be a vertical up and down fit for one direction at a time.  The Hebrew more accurately tells of a stairway or ramp, with heavenly beings ascending and descending simultaneously.  Jacob dreams of a connection between the sacred and heavenly with the ordinary and earthly, a passageway, a gateway.  

Second, our modern understanding of the function of dreaming does not fit this story.  Jacob’s dream is not the result of a psychological state as we understand it today, of working out stress and anxiety or of subconscious fears.  Dreams in scripture are an external forms of divine communication.  “They are one means by which God’s own self is revealed.  …When Jacob awakens, he does not speak of God’s presence in his dream; he speaks of God’s presence in this place” (NIB 542).  

Jacob makes this discovery while he is in flight. He flees from home lest his brother kill him. When sunset falls, he looks for a safe place to sleep until he can continue to flee at sunrise. His stone pillow speaks to the ordinary place he finds himself, to his lack of preparation, to his vulnerability. He is not looking for God, not expecting rescue, not praying, not sacrificing. He himself does nothing to invite God to that place and with good reason: he finds himself there because of his misdeeds.

It makes sense for Jacob to expect judgement from God because of his deception and trickery.  But what he experiences instead is God’s unconditional faithfulness to him, and this is a surprising discovery to him:

Then Jacob woke from his sleep and said, ‘Surely the Lord is in this place—and I did not know it!’ 28:16

His surprise is two-fold.

First, the place is ordinary, not extraordinary, not a known holy place, not a place he or anyone would expect to experience God.  

Second, until this dream, all Jacob knows of God has been the God of his father, Isaac, in the circle of his father’s home.  At this moment, he discovers God is not limited to the home place he had known, nor available only to his father, but God is with him even in this place, even with him.  

As part of this experience, we see Jacob on a journey, from the past, to the present, to future. Again as with all stories of beginnings: to begin is a transition, a time of discovery and transformation. Jacob’s understanding of himself and of God is new, a beginning. Jacob discovers he is part of a larger story which brings him to this place of transition. The beginning of the story of God and Jacob is indeed a new beginning for Jacob, a chapter in the ongoing story of God’s faithfulness to Abraham.

In this sense, this is a story of Jacob’s ladder is a story of call, of vocation. Jacob hears God say that the promises of given to his ancestors are given also to him. He then wakes in the morning to continue his journey with a sense of purpose, believing the promises given to him.

As with all beginnings, Jacob’s belief in this promise will be sorely tested, but on the mountain he discovers God’s promises are unconditional, given even to scoundrels such as him. 

Thanks be to God for that!

Resources
Genesis 12-36.  A Continental Commentary.  Claus Westerman.  Fortress Press Ed.: Minneapolis.  1995. 
The New Interpreter’s Bible. Vol. I.  Abingdon P.: 1994.