Advent images in the Torah / 12
Jacob fights for his rights promised by God and loses everything. At a low point, God meets him in a dream. He sees a ladder to heaven and God promises him that he will look to his rights and that through him blessing will come for all the people (Genesis 24:12-15).
It is exciting that Jesus also speaks of a ladder to heaven in the New Testament: “You will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man” (John 1:51).
The shepherds in the field had already seen heaven open and full of angels (Luke 2:13).
Mankind once wanted to build its own stairway to heaven. Babel symbolises a humanity that rebels against God’s commands and wants to decide everything by themself. But God wants to come to us.
With his reference to the ladder to heaven, Jesus says that trough him God comes down to humanity. The cross on which Jesus gave his life becomes a ladder to heaven that we can hold on to.
Messiah images in the Torah
- God seeks us – Adam where are you?
- The possibility of a choice – Two trees in the Garden of Eden
- Neediness instead divinity – A new view
- God’s master plan – Salvation through a human being
- A divine clothing – God acts
- A world upside down – Kai and Abel
- Living in the presence of God – Enoch
- God is calling – Noah
- A king-priest like Melchizedek
- God visits Abraham
- Life through a sacrifice – Isaac
- The ladder to heaven – Jacob
- New identity from Jacob to Israel
- Messiah Ben Joseph – Joseph the son of Jacob
- Shiloh, whom all nations will serve – Blessing on Judah
- Moses, the prototype of the Saviour
- References to Jesus in Moses
- The Passover Lamb
- The pillar of cloud and fire
- God wants to be with us – The tabernacle / The temple
- The snake on a pole – An image of a new beginning
- The rock in the desert – Faith is not a method
- A prophet greater than Moses
- A star from Jacob – Bileam