Take the story of Jacob's dream in Genesis 28, where he rests his head on a stone and sees a ladder stretching to heaven. On that ladder, angels ascend and descend. A seemingly simple scene, right? But Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi, whose interpretation we find in Bereshit Rabbah, one of the earliest and most important collections of rabbinic interpretations of Genesis, saw something much deeper. He saw a prophecy of exile.
He reads Jacob’s journey—"Jacob departed [vayetze] from Beersheba"—and connects it to Jeremiah’s prophecy of expulsion: "Send them from My presence, and let them go [veyetze’u]" (Jeremiah 15:1). See the echo? The shared word hinting at a shared fate.
Rabbi Yehoshua doesn't stop there. "And went to Ḥaran," the text continues. Ḥaran, he links to the "ḥaron apo," the "enflamed wrath" in Lamentations (1:12). Each detail of Jacob's journey, from encountering "the place" to resting on stones, becomes a mirror reflecting the pain and displacement of exile. He finds verses in Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Lamentations, each resonating with the original text. It's like a poetic chain of suffering, linking the personal to the national.
But the most fascinating part? The ladder itself. "He dreamed, and behold, a ladder [sulam]" (Genesis 28:12). Rabbi Yehoshua identifies this ladder with Nebuchadnezzar's idol! Not just any idol, but a specific one. He points out that the Hebrew word for ladder, sulam (סֻּלָּם), and semel (סֶּמֶל), meaning idol or symbol, share the same letters, just rearranged. It's a clever play on words, but it's more than that. It suggests that the ladder, this symbol of connection to God, can be twisted, perverted into something idolatrous.
The Midrash continues, drawing parallels between the ladder's dimensions (as described in Daniel) and the idol's. It even interprets the angels ascending and descending as Hananya, Mishael, and Azarya (Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego), who, while outwardly honoring Nebuchadnezzar, secretly mocked his idolatry. They were "exalting his honor and denigrating his honor," the Midrash says, paying lip service while refusing to bow down to the golden image. They were "dancing and leaping before him and denigrating." What a powerful image of resistance!
Then comes another twist. The Midrash offers an alternate interpretation of the angels, identifying them as Daniel. It relates a story of Nebuchadnezzar's serpent-like idol that swallowed everything offered to it. Daniel, according to this reading, ascended the ladder, metaphorically or literally, and removed what the idol had swallowed. He tricked the serpent by feeding it straw filled with nails, thus exposing its emptiness and deceit. "I will remove what it swallowed from its mouth," the Midrash quotes from Jeremiah (51:44), connecting Daniel's act of defiance to the ultimate downfall of Babylonian idolatry.
What are we to make of all this? Rabbi Yehoshua's interpretation, as recorded in Bereshit Rabbah, is more than just a clever reading of scripture. It's a way of understanding exile, not as a random event, but as a recurring pattern, a consequence of straying from God's path. It's a reminder that even in the darkest of times, acts of resistance, both overt and subtle, can chip away at the idols that hold us captive. And perhaps most importantly, it suggests that the symbols of our faith, like Jacob's ladder, are always open to interpretation, capable of being both a source of connection and a tool of oppression, depending on how we choose to use them.