Genesis 28

reviewed Worded for an eighth-grade reader; the reading is the Translation's. Read the Translation with its notes.

1 Isaac called Jacob and blessed him. He gave him this command: "Do not marry a woman from the daughters of Canaan. 2 Get up and go to Paddan-aram, to the house of Bethuel, your mother's father. Marry a woman from there, one of the daughters of Laban, your mother's brother. 3 May El Shaddai bless you. May he make you fruitful and make you many, and you will become an assembly of peoples. 4 May he give the blessing of Abraham to you and to your descendants with you, so that you will possess the land where you now live as a foreigner. God gave that land to Abraham." 5 So Isaac sent Jacob off, and he went to Paddan-aram, to Laban son of Bethuel the Aramean. Laban was the brother of Rebekah, the mother of Jacob and Esau. 6 Esau saw that Isaac had blessed Jacob and sent him away to Paddan-aram to marry a woman from there. He saw that when Isaac blessed him, he commanded him, "Do not marry a woman from the daughters of Canaan." 7 Jacob listened to his father and his mother and went to Paddan-aram. 8 Esau saw that the daughters of Canaan displeased his father Isaac.

9 So Esau went to Ishmael. Besides the wives he already had, he took as his wife Mahalath, the daughter of Abraham's son Ishmael and the sister of Nebaioth. 10 Jacob left Beersheba and set out for Harran. 11 He came upon the place and spent the night there, because the sun had set. He took one of the stones of the place and put it at his head, and he lay down in that place. 12 He had a dream. He saw a stairway set up on the earth, with its top reaching the sky. And he saw messengers of God going up and going down on it. 13 And he saw the LORD standing over him. He said, "I am the LORD, the God of your father Abraham and the God of Isaac. I will give the land you are lying on to you and to your descendants. 14 Your descendants will be like the dust of the land. You will burst out to the west and to the east, to the north and to the south. All the clans of the ground will be blessed in you and in your descendants. 15 I am with you. I will keep you wherever you go, and I will bring you back to this ground. For I will not abandon you until I have done what I have told you." 16 Then Jacob woke up from his sleep and said, "Certainly the LORD is in this place, and I did not know it."

17 He was afraid and said, "How fearsome this place is! This is nothing other than the house of God, and this is the gate of the sky." 18 Early in the morning Jacob took the stone he had put at his head and set it up as a standing stone. Then he poured oil on top of it. 19 He named that place Bethel. But at first the name of the city was Luz. 20 Then Jacob made a vow. He said, "If God will be with me, and will keep me on this road I am traveling, and will give me bread to eat and clothes to wear, 21 and I come back safely to my father's house, and the LORD will be my God— 22 and this stone, which I have set up as a standing stone, will be a house of God. And of everything you give me, I will surely give you a tenth."