They tell us of the moment when, as it would appear, his soul awoke in
him. And they surprise us in some degree, as such awakenings of
spiritual capacity often do; for Jacob's recorded antecedents were not
exactly such as to lead us to expect the dream and the vision, and the
awakening which are described in this passage.

He had cheated his brother out of his father's blessing; he was leaving
his father's house in consequence, to avoid this brother's threatened
vengeance; and as he slept at Bethel he dreamed his dream of the ladder
set up on earth and reaching to heaven; and he saw the angels ascending
and descending, and the Lord standing above it, and he heard the Divine
voice charged with promise and with blessing: "I am with thee, and will
keep thee in all places whither thou goest." This, taking it in all its
parts, is a very surprising narrative; and the point in it on which I
desire to fix your attention for a moment is this, that this vision
startled him into a new consciousness--"Surely the Lord is in this place;
and I knew it not." It was the beginning of a new life.

That vision, we may be sure, never entirely faded. He was never
afterwards the same man he had been before it. It had awakened the
divine capacity in him; and it remained with him as a constant reminder
of the presence of God in his life, to protect and to inspire him--"I am
with thee, and I will keep thee in all places whither thou goest." Such
a voice as this in a man's heart gives his life a new quality; it puts
him in a new relation to all common things.

We may well believe that it was this more than anything else which drew
Jacob apart from the common heathen life around him, from that day
onwards. It was this which, in spite of all his weaknesses, defects, and
failures in life and character, gradually raised him to a different