Going Up and Going Down: A Key to Interpreting Jacob's Dream (Gen 28.10-22)

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In Going Up and Going Down Yitzhak Peleg argues that the story of Jacobs dream (Genesis 28.10-22), functions as a mise en abyme (as a figure, trope or structure that somehow reflects in compact form, in miniature, the larger structure in which it appears, Greenstein). Close examination reveals that focusing on the vision of Jacobs dream and understanding it as a symbolic dream facilitates an explanation of the dream and its meaning. Scholars have historically classified the dream as theophany, the purpose of which is to explain how Beth-El became a sacred place, and as such the vision in Jacobs dream is generally accepted as merely ornamental, or even lacking a message in itself. Whilst Peleg does not contradict or seek to go against identification of the dream as theophany, he sees a more nuanced purpose behind its presentation. Pelegs proposal is that the description of the vision, and especially that of the movement of the angels, is not embellishment, supplementation or scenic background, of Gods message, but that it directly symbolizes the path taken by the Patriarchs to and from the Promised Land. Furthermore, the narrative context and visual description in the dream in which Angels of God were going up and down it appears when Jacob is on his way to Harran, that is to say, when he is about to leave Israel.

Reviews

Greenstein's book provides a new interpretation of the narrative of Jacob's stay in Bethel ... This study certainly offers important and interesting points for the Bethel narrative. * Zeitschrift fr alttestamentliche Wissenschaft (Bloomsbury translation) *

Author Bio

Dr. Yitzhak (Itzik) Peleg, is Senior Lecturer and previously Head of Biblical Studies at Beit Berl College, Israel. He is editor of MOED, Annual for Jewish Studies.