(Genesis 28)
Isaac and Rebecca had two boys, Esau and Jacob. Esau became a hunter, and Jacob a shepherd. One day Esau came home from hunting very hungry. He asked Jacob to give him some of the red broth that he had just cooked. Jacob knew that Esau cared nothing for his birthright (that is, all that he would receive as the eldest son). But Jacob wanted that more than anything else in the world. So Jacob said, “Will you give me your birthright if I do?” Esau said, “Yes, I am starving; give me the broth for the blessing.” Jacob could not believe Esau meant it; but he did mean it, and so sold his birthright for something to eat. Not long after, Jacob received the birthright blessing from his father, Isaac. Then Esau was sorry and angry, and hated his brother, and planned to kill him. Rebecca told Jacob what Esau was planning to do, and sent him to her brother’s home to save Jacob’s life.
So Jacob had to leave his father and mother and home and start alone on a long journey with nothing but a long cloak to wrap about him at night. When the sun went down, as he was thinking of the great wrong he had done his brother, tired and sad at heart, he lay down to sleep on a stony hillside, placing one of the stones under his head for a pillow. At last he fell asleep, and in his dream he saw a ladder reaching from earth to heaven. He saw beautiful shining angels coming down the ladder and going back. At the top he saw God looking down on him, saying, “I am the Lord, the God of Abraham and thy father Isaac.” God promised if he would do what was right, that he would forgive all his wrong—be with him in all his journey and give him the wonderful promises made to Abraham and Isaac.
Early in the morning, when Jacob awoke, he knelt beside that stone, promising God that he would be a better man. He lived to be an aged man—one hundred and forty-seven years old—but he never forgot that place which he called “The House of God,” from which he saw the ladder that reached to heaven, showing him that God was near him.
From this story the beautiful lines of the hymn, which have been such a comfort to many upon battlefields and in the hour of death, were written:
Though like a wanderer,
The sun gone down,
Darkness be over me,
My rest a stone,
Yet, in my dreams I’d be,