ABSTRACT
In the biblical story of Jacob’s dream in which the patriarch saw the angels of God ascending and descending a ladder that united the heaven and the earth (Genesis 28.12) we are not told what form or shape the angels had. The same is true of the Lord ‘who stood above’ this ladder supposedly uttering that he is “the God of Abraham … and of Isaac”; the latter two were real people for Jacob, and we assumed that he fathomed them looking just like him. In the morning following the night when he dreamt, the wise man, exclaiming “The Lord is in this place and I knew it not” (28.16), took the stone that had served him as a pillow and, setting it up as a landmark, named the place Bethel, “the house of the Lord” (28.19).
