Jacob's Ladder

The significance of the dream has been debated, but most interpretations agree that it identified Jacob with the obligations and inheritance of the people chosen by God, as understood in Abrahamic religions.

And he called the name of that place Beth-el, but the name of the city was Luz at the first.The classic Torah commentaries offer several interpretations of Jacob's Ladder.

Jacob feared that his children would never be free of Esau's domination, but God assured him that at the End of Days, Edom too would fall.

Yet another interpretation[citation needed] is that the place at which Jacob stopped for the night was, in reality, Moriah, the future home of the Temple in Jerusalem, which was considered to be the "bridge" between Heaven and Earth.

In this interpretation, it is also significant that the word for ladder (Hebrew: סלם, romanized: sullām) and the name for the mountain on which the Torah was given, Sinai (סיני) have the same Gematria.

The Hellenistic Jewish philosopher Philo, born in Alexandria, (d. c. 50 CE) presents his allegorical interpretation of the ladder in the first book of his De somniis.

A hilltop overlooking the Israeli settlement of Beit El north of Jerusalem, believed by some to be the site of Jacob's dream, is a tourist destination during the holiday of Sukkot.

[5] Jesus said in John 1:51, "And he saith unto him, 'Verily, verily, I say unto you, Hereafter ye shall see Heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of man.'"

For the ladder seems to me to signify in a riddle by that vision the gradual ascent by means of virtue, by which it is possible for us to ascend from earth to heaven, not using material steps, but improvement and correction of manners.

As such, the Carthusian monk Guigo II used it as inspiration for his description of the steps of the Lectio Divina, and the contemporary philosopher Peter Kreeft used it in his apologetics.