This way of looking at
the thing appears most clearly and with incomparable charm in the
story of the ladder which Jacob saw at Bethel. "He dreamed, and
behold a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to
heaven, and behold the angels of God ascending and descending on
it. And he was afraid and said, How dreadful is this place! This
is none other but the house of God, and this is the gate of
heaven." The ladder stands at the place not at this moment merely,
but continually, and, as it were, by nature. Bethel--so Jacob
perceives from this--is a place where heaven and earth meet, where
the angels ascend and descend, to carry on the communication
between earth and heaven ordained by God at this gate.
All this is only to be understood as a glorification of the
relations and arrangements of the cultus as we find them (say) in
the first centuries of the divided kingdom. All that seems
offensive and heathenish to a later age is here consecrated and
countenanced by Jehovah Himself and His favoured ones,-- the high
places, the memorial stones (maccceboth), the trees, the wells. /1/
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