Perhaps the dream that has most captured the imagination of people around the world is the dream of Jacob seeing angels ascending and descending on a ladder reaching the heavens. Whereas most other Biblical dreams are associated with specific events, messages, or warnings, the dream of Jacob has an eternal, universal aspect which sets it in a category of its own. The story of Jacob’s dream takes relatively few verses, yet millions of words have been written about it.

We discussed earlier the power and significance of symbolism. The lasting quality of a symbol lies in its ability to transcend the confines of time, lending itself to new and deeper associations in every generation. In many cases the simpler the symbolism, the more can be read into it.

This is certainly true with Jacob’s dream, and it is for this reason that we have chosen it as an example of how to apply what we have presented in the first part of this book in a more in-depth fashion. We will now analyze many commentaries that have been written about the dream over the ages, as well as examine the dream in light of the ladder of dreams we constructed earlier in this book.

We hope that at the end of this book you will be inspired to delve more deeply into the subject and find new relevance in it so that the dream will speak directly to you in the here and now.