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The fiery face at the top of the ladder in the Ladder of Jacob may be a heavenly image of Jacob. In the Aramaic Targum Pseudo-Jonathan, angels say Jacob's image is fixed on God's throne, which is a similar picture.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
Ladder of Jacob 1:3
Pseudepigrapha, Hebrew Bible Expansions
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. 6 And as I looked, there were the angels of God ascending and descending on it; but the Lord was set above it, and he called me, saying, Jacob, Jacob.
Pseudo-Jonathan Genesis 28:12
Targum
12 He had a dream, and behold, a ladder was fixed in the earth with its top reaching towards the heavens. And behold, the two angels who had gone to Sodom and who had been banished from their apartment because they had revealed the secrets of the Lord of the world, went about when they were banished until the time that Jacob went forth from his father’s house. Then, as an act of kindness, they accompanied him to Bethel, and on that day they ascended to the heavens on high, and said, “Come and see Jacob the pious, whose image is fixed in the Throne of Glory; and whom you have desired to see.” Then the rest of the holy angels of the Lord came down to look at him.
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Notes and References
“... Scholars have previously noted that in Ladder the fiery Face not only embodies God’s Glory but also seems to represent the heavenly counterpart of Jacob. They observe that the bust of fire, labeled in Ladder as the Face, can be associated with the heavenly “image” of Jacob engraved on the Throne of Glory. [...] A distinctive feature of this description is that the heavenly counterpart of Jacob, his “image,” is engraved on a very special celestial entity, on the Throne of Glory. Engraving on the Throne might indicate an association with the Kavod since the Throne is the central part of the Kavod imagery—the seat of the anthropomorphic Glory of the Lord. The image engraved on the Throne might be an allusion to the face, the fiery face, since it is engraved on the fiery and glorious Throne of the Glory. ...”
Orlov, Andrei A.
From Apocalypticism to Merkabah Mysticism: Studies in the Slavonic Pseudepigrapha
(pp. 406-407) Brill, 2007
* 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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