Jacob's Pillar Stone and "Raising up a Name"

[Guest]

I mentioned before that I would like to write a post detailing exactly how I've been inspired, by the Holy Spirit, to discern whether certain things from Jewish understanding were true or not. This post isn't the whole of what I could write, but I really don't want to waste a lot of time writing lots of material that most of the people on this forum wouldn't be interested in anyway. (I'm not complaining, though, just telling it like it is.)

The reason I said what I said was because I was being pointed to what the NT writers had said on certain topics in the Old Testament as being the 'final authority' of interpretation. I claimed instead that while the NT authors were correct in their interpretations, they were NOT the 'final authority' and that other ways of interpreting the OT passages in question (including traditional Jewish interpretations, for instance) were not excluded from being right.

The example I'd like to give is Jacob's pillar stone. In Genesis 28, we read the story of Jacob's dream of a stairway reaching from earth to heaven with angels ascending and descending upon it. The foot of the stairway was at the stone upon which he had rested. Jacob erected this stone as a pillar, calling it the "gate of heaven" and the "house of God."

In John 1:51, Jesus makes an allusion to this story. Instead of the stairway, however, He says that at some point in the future, Nathanael would see angels ascending and descending upon Him.

As I'd mentioned previously, I've done a lot of research into the cultural context of the bible. When I first started researching this story in Genesis 28, I was astonished at what I found. Jacob erecting a stone as a pillar did indeed have a cultural precedent - in the worst possible sort of pagan idolatry! It was traditional to erect a stone - usually an idol or a phallic symbol - to mark a piece of land as belonging to oneself and one's family. This practice was called "raising up a shem (Hebrew for 'name')". The stone itself was called a "shem". Jacob erected an uncarved stone, but the symbolism was apparently exactly the same.

Steve, do you remember me calling into your program a few years ago and telling you about this?

Upon discovering this, I prayed and asked God why Jacob would have done something so blatantly pagan in honor of God. (There are other precedents in the bible where the people worshipped God while clinging to idolatrous practices, such as in Judges 17. I wanted to know whether that was what Jacob was doing or not.)

God indicated to me that I should continue to study about this "gate of heaven" and this "house of God." He was emphatic that Jacob was not doing something pagan in honor of Him!

However, if that were the case, then why was Jacob doing something so very similar? That was the approach I used to continue in my studies.

Shortly, I came upon another biblical precedent for what Jacob had done, but this time the precedent was clearly pagan. In Genesis 11, we read the story of the Tower of Babel. Here we have the people not only saying that this was built to "make a name (Hebrew shem)" but also that the top of this tower "was of the heavens." Most bibles render it "whose top may reach to heaven" but that's an incorrect translation. Instead, this was talking about a ziggurat with a temple on top which had a ceiling with a picture of the Zodiac (the "heavens") on it. This tower was called, in Sumerian cuneiform, "bab-ili", the "gate of god" or, more figuratively, the gate of heaven.

If the people building the Tower of Babel were also creating a "house of god" and a "gate of heaven" then what was different about what Jacob was doing? Why was the Tower of Babel clearly pagan and what Jacob did, not pagan?

I continued to study and pray for understanding. As I did, I noticed something very interesting. The way that this ziggurat-temple symbolically linked earth and heaven was through a ritual that was enacted in its temple, on a couch right underneath the Zodiac. The pagan high priest and priestess would have ritual sex to symbolize the mystical union of the earth goddess and the sky lord. It was meant as a pagan symbolic "marriage ceremony"!

Wait a second, I thought to myself. Here we have a civilization - that of the Sumerians - that probably goes right back to Cain himself. It's counterfeiting one of the central themes of the bible, the biblical marital union in the Garden of Eden. There, we have a dwelling of God in the Garden with a marital union, but instead of merely being symbolic, it's actual. Instead of involving no form of commitment or overcoming whatsoever, it was exactly the opposite! The link between earth and heaven, rather than being found in the sexual act itself, was found in the physical descendant of Eve - the Messiah!

That's how I began to see the parallels between the various "houses of God" in the bible. I also began to study the contrasts with things like the Tower of Babel, and how they counterfeited biblical themes. I realized that Jacob was indeed not doing anything pagan at all. The pagan rituals that seemed similar were indeed similar - because they were counterfeits of God's truths!

I prayed once again, to confirm what I had come to understand about the true meaning of the "house of God" and the "gate of heaven." And, God did confirm exactly what I had concluded.

That's just one example of how using the cultural context of the bible, or using a traditional Jewish interpretation of something (such as a physical third Temple being built in Jerusalem) led me to a correct conclusion that was endorsed by the Holy Spirit through prayer and study.

Anyway, I don't expect anyone reading this to automatically agree with me and believe everything I say. Again, this was a result of my own personal prayer and study. Feel free to likewise pray and study, asking God to confirm whether this is true, but I'm definitely not saying that anyone should set what I've explained on the same level as the bible itself.

Damon