[I'm fascinated with this particular part of the Bible. It's when Jacob spends his first night away from home on his journey to seek a bride. Here's what I wrote about the passage.]
I’ve often thought, what must it be like to use a stone as a pillow? And what kind of dreams might that produce? Well, if you could get to sleep at all, I think those dreams would be painful ones. Before the dreams of angels and the Lord’s appearance and blessings, might Jacob have dreamed about being alone in the wilderness away from home; might he have dreamed of his brother Esau coming after him to kill him since Jacob had just connived with his mother to wrest Isaac’s blessing away from Esau; might Jacob’s neck muscles have been cramped and aching and produced an anxious dream about a foreign land he’d never been to and whether he’d be able to find a wife there?
I think sleeping on a stone tells us that this was for Jacob a hard place, not a place where you’re comfortable and stable and know you belong. And yet the most redemptive and beautiful dream comes to awaken him, as though to say, in the midst of your being uprooted and in pain and guilt and doubt, the Lord is in this place.
Jacob discovers, in my view, that wherever he goes, hard place or no, God is, and will be with him: a frightening, awesome, profound moment in the Torah.
And now I know that an iconic place in the United States is the very namesake of the passage.
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| Dancer Ted Shawn, Founder of "Jacob's Pillow," at the rock |
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