Texts in Conversation
The fiery head at the top of the ladder in the Ladder of Jacob may come from Genesis 28, where the Hebrew word for the ladder's “top” can also mean “head.”
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
Genesis 28:12
Hebrew Bible
11 He reached a certain place where he decided to camp because the sun had gone down. He took one of the stones and placed it near his head. Then he fell asleep in that place 12 and had a dream. He saw a stairway erected on the earth with its top reaching to the heavens. The angels of God were going up and coming down it 13 and the Lord stood at its top. He said, “I am the Lord, the God of your grandfather Abraham and the God of your father Isaac. I will give you and your descendants the ground you are lying on. 14 Your descendants will be like the dust of the earth, and you will spread out to the west, east, north, and south. And so all the families of the earth may receive blessings through you and through your descendants.
Ladder of Jacob 1:3
Pseudepigrapha, Hebrew Bible Expansions
1 Now Jacob went to his uncle Laban, and he found a place and fell asleep there, laying his head on a stone, for the sun had set, and there he saw a vision. 2 And there, a ladder was set up on the earth, whose top reached to heaven. 3 And the top of the ladder was a face like a man's, hewn out of fire. 4 Now it had twelve steps up to the top of the ladder, and upon each step up to the top were two human faces on the right and on the left — twenty-four faces seen down to their chests, on the ladder. 5 But the middle face was higher than them all, which I saw made of fire, to the shoulder and the arm, very terrifying, more than the twenty-four faces.
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Notes and References
“... Here, Jacob’s dream has undergone a radical transformation. Instead of a ladder with angels, what Jacob sees here are human heads—a fiery head at the very top of the ladder, and then human faces to the left and right side of each of the ladder’s twelve steps. Such a ghoulish display might indeed explain why Jacob was frightened when he awoke—but what is the point of it all? The head at the very top of the ladder seems to have been generated by the biblical text itself. It says of the ladder that “its top reached up to heaven,” but the Hebrew word for “top” (rō’š) can also mean “head.” Taken in this sense, the biblical text would seem to be saying that the ladder had an actual head on it—hence, the fiery head in our text. ...”
Kugel, James L.
The Ladder of Jacob: Ancient Interpretations of the Biblical Story of Jacob and His Children
(p. 25) Princeton University Press, 2006
* The use of references are not endorsements of their contents. Please read the entirety of the provided reference(s) to understand the author's full intentions regarding the use of these texts.
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