“... Here the twelve steps of the ladder represent the twelve periods of “this age,” while twenty four “minor” faces embody the twenty-four kings of the ungodly nations. Ascending and descending angels on the ladder are envisioned as the guardian angels belonging to the nations hostile to Jacob and his descendants. The angelic locomotion or “ascents” appear to be construed in the passage as the arrogations against Israel. It has been previously noticed that this historic revelation is influenced by the fourfold scheme of the antagonistic empires reflected in the Book of Daniel through a reference to the “four ascents” and also through the peculiar features of the Danielic empires and specifically the last of the four kingdoms, Rome, represented by Esau. [...] In these passages, the similarities with the Danielic account are even more apparent than in the Ladder since the familiar fourfold structure is now represented by Babylon, Media, Greece, and Edom—the empires that are often associated in the history of interpretation with the four beasts of Daniel 7. Kugel notes that in these materials, like in the Ladder of Jacob, “the four beasts [of Daniel’s vision] are transformed into ‘angels of God’ said to go up and down Jacob’s ladder.” This peculiar theme of the hostile angels on the ladder that resist Jacob and his progeny by their ascents and descents might provide additional evidence that the authors of the Ladder were cognizant of the motif of angelic opposition that performs such a pivotal role in the doppelganger lore. It is also important that the heavenly counterpart imagery in the Ladder of Jacob becomes applied to the antagonistic figures when the infamous empires are represented by their angelic “patrons.” We already encountered similar conceptual constellations in the Book of Daniel where the heavenly counterpart in the form of the Son of Man is juxtaposed with the upper identities of the hostile nations. ...”