Week 2 Genesis 32
Twenty years after leaving home Jacob was finally going back.
At one of his stops along the way angels of God came to meet him. When Jacob saw them, he exclaimed, “This is God’s camp!” So he named the place Mahanaim (the footnote said Mahanaim meant two camps). This paragraph was interesting to me because I’ve been thinking about the story of Jacob’s Ladder-Dream.
That ladder – or stairway – reached from earth to heaven
On the stairway the angels of God (were) going up and down.
It’s possible this was a purely visionary event that had nothing to do with reality. It was maybe just a dramatic visual used to catch Jacob’s attention. But I started wondering if the vision – as dreamily non-real as it was – was also a visionary tableau of something kind-of-similar that was actually going on in reality.
There’s quite a few bible references that distinguish between the earth (where we are right now) and another place (where the Lord is) – a Lower Region and an Upper Region. There’s a border between them and none of us get to go to the Upper Region. But Jacob’s Ladder shows that there’s one-way traffic from Upper to Lower. That angels had passports giving them access to our space.
So since I’d been wondering about angelic migration between Upper & Lower I noticed Jacob’s Mahanaim camp. Only one camp Jacob thought. But wait a second. The Lord’s camp is here too. Mine’s visible. His isn’t.
Note: quotes from Genesis 32:1-2 28:12 (NLT)