May the Almighty … bless you. With riches.

Make you fruitful. With offspring.

And multiply (or “magnify”) you. May He magnify your stature

ויתן לך את ברכת אברהם, when He had said (12,2) “become a source of blessing!” This involves his teaching people about monotheism, the acceptance of which would result in tangible blessings for those people from G’d. This in turn would make the people regard Avraham as responsible for the blessings they receive. לך ולזרעך אתך לרשתך, if the children would also be following in the footsteps of their parents acting as spiritual instructors to the people around them, their claim to this land would be reinforced. This would become an irreversible sanctification of the name of the Lord. Isaiah 49,3 described this as G’d saying: ישראל אשר בך אתפאר, “Israel in whom I am glorified.” This is also an example of what David had in mind when he said in Psalms 104,31 “G’d delights in His handiwork.”

ארץ מגוריך, the land of Canaan in which you dwell at the present time.

וירא עשו כי ברך יצחק, we see from here that in spite of Esau’s noting that his father had sent Yaakov all the way to Charan to prevent his marrying one of the Canaanite girls, as this was not in keeping with his blessing, he did not pay much attention to this, except that when he saw to what extent his father was unhappy about this כי רעות בנות כנען בעיני יצחק אביו, he thought that it was due to his wives opposing his parents’ lifestyles, etc., as documented I 26,35. In order to appease his parents he then went to Ishmael to marry Machalat. One of the reasons the Torah reports these details is to show that had Yitzchok objected to Esau’s marrying Canaanite girls in the first place his objection would have been effective. If Rivkah’s intervention was effective now when she remonstrated with her husband there is no reason to believe that it would not have been effective when Esau was about to get married.

ויצא יעקב...וילך חרנה. He set out with the destination Charan in his mind. Before he reached this destination the following incidents occurred.

ויפגע במקום, it happened that he came to a place he had not intended to go to at all. The meaning of the word המקום is that it was a place designed to accommodate travelers overnight. Every town had such an inn in its public square. This is also why the angels who came to Lot said (19,20) כי ברחוב נלין, “we will sleep in (the inn) in the public square. The same expression is also used in connection with the פלגש בגבעה in Judges 19,20 where we read רק ברחוב אל תלין “only do not spend the night in the public inn.”

מאבני המקום, which had been placed there for the travelers to eat on and to sit on.

והנה מלאכי אלוקים עולים ויורדים..והנה ה' נצב עליו, this foreshadowed the future when the “angels of G’d” the superpowers who had become very powerful in our world would begin their decline and end up at the bottom of the rungs of the ladder. The Lord G’d Who stood above the ladder is the symbol of the promise that G’d will never abandon the Jewish people, as we know from Jeremiah 46,28 כי אעשה כלה בכל הגויים ואותך לא אעשה כלה, “even when I utterly destroy all the gentile nations, I will not destroy you.”

הארץ אשר אתה שוכב עליה, a reference to the region currently known as “the land of Canaan,”

לך אתננה, so that you will be considered as a “prince of G’d,” as was your grandfather (23,6) as well as your father (26,28)

והיה זרעך כעפר הארץ, ופרצת, after your descendants will have multiplied so that they are as the dust of the earth, numerically speaking, you will spread out. The expression is to be understood as similar to Isaiah 51,23: ותשימי כארץ גוך וכחוץ לעוברים, “so that you made your back like the ground, like a street for passers by.” Precisely when the Jewish people will have reached a seeming low point in their collective experience (downtrodden by the Egyptian taskmasters, or in later exiles) they will expand and become powerful in a measure never before seen on earth. ימה וקדמה צפונה ונגבה, when that time arrives Bileam’s prophecy in Numbers 24,17 וקרקר כל בני שת, “it will smash the foundation of all mankind.” The final redemption of the Jewish people will come after they have suffered the low point in their history. (Compare Sanhedrin 95: “if you see a generation experiencing so many persecutions and setbacks that it appears a raging river is inundating them, wait for the ending for the prophet Isaiah in his description of the redemption writes of it immediately after having described the very opposite in chapter 59, 19-20”)

ונברכו בך כל משפחות האדמה ובזרעך, the same type of blessing mentioned in Isaiah 61,6 i.e. because you will then be known and revered as the priests of the Lord, they will receive their Divine blessing through you.

כי לא אעזבך, when I said that after the exile you will expand in all directions of the globe, know no boundaries, this is possible only because even during the long years of exile I did not abandon you, as stated explicitly in Leviticus 26,44 לא מאסתים ולא געלתים, “I will not have rejected them, nor will I have abhorred them.”

עד אשר אם עשיתי, as long as I have not carried out what I have said to you now. (i.e. the part commencing with ופרצת). There are occasions when the word עד is used in the sense of בעוד, such as Song of Songs 1,12 עד שהמלך במסבו, ”while the king was on his couch.” Or, Proverbs 8,26 עד לא עשה ארץ וחוצות, “while G’d had not yet made earth or even clumps of dust.” However, once G’d would have performed this great salvation, not only would He continue to treat His people with loving kindness by not abandoning them, but He would add a new dimension to it by walking among them, as promised in Leviticus 26,12 והתהלכתי בתוככם, “I will be walking amongst you (constantly).”

אכן יש ה' במקום הזה, there can be no question that this is a location from where the gift of prophetic insights is dispensed, seeing that I have been granted such an insight without even having expected it or prepared myself for it spiritually. It is a fact that the characteristics of a person undergo changes in the land of Israel just as the climate and very air in this country are different, contribute to one’s mental and spiritual progress. Our sages have phrased this (Baba Batra 158) as “the very air of the Land of Israel makes one wiser.”

ואנכי לא ידעתי, if I had realised the special distinction of this site I would have prepared myself mentally for receiving these Divine insights.

He was afraid. Because of the disrespect he had inadvertently shown by sleeping there.

This is none other. The place that he saw in his dream was the site designated for the Beis Hamikdosh.

The gate. The ladder signified that it was from that place that prayers ascend to heaven.

וישם אותה מצבה, he sanctified it as an altar which he would erect on his return from Charan. The Torah testifies in Genesis 35,14 that this is indeed what Yaakov did on his way home to the land of Canaan. ויצב יעקב מצבה במקום אשר דבר “Yaakov established an altar on the site where he had said.”

אם יהיה אלוקים עמדי, to remove from me all the pressures which I am under, pressures which prevent man from giving his attention to matters which should receive his attention, i.e. to G’d and what He expects from man. What troubled Yaakov was what our sages in Eyruvin 41 described as the three problems which are liable to unbalance someone’s mind as well as his relationship to his Creator. They are: gentiles, being involved personally in natural disasters, and excessive poverty.

ושמרני, from wicked gentiles who would force him to change his lifestyle;

ונתן לי לחם לאכול, so that I will not be forced to violate both my own integrity and that ordained for me by my Maker.

ושבתי בשלום, from all the problems besetting man, i.e. a reference to what the Talmud had called רוח רעה.

והיה ה' לי לאלוקים, then G’d will be a judge, and He can examine to see if I did not fulfill my vow to the best of my ability. The letter ו at the beginning of the word והיה, [where we would perhaps have expected Yaakov to use an ordinary future tense such as יהיה, Ed.], may be in lieu of the word הנה, meaning that Yaakov would already from now on act on the assumption that G’d would provide him with the necessities he had asked for and therefore he was willing to be judged by the attribute of Justice, not relying on the attribute of Mercy.