In Vayeitze, Jacob encounters Beth-El, an experience on the future Temple Mount. He sleeps on the special rock that is thought to be the foundation stone called the Even Shetiyah, then anoints it. This stone is thought to have been under the Ark or the Altar when the Temple was built. In past newsletters, we investigated how Jacob’s experience with the Even Shetiyah foreshadowed King Nebuchadnezzar’s dream of an uncut stone shattering the kingdoms of men, and then growing into mountain that fills the whole earth, a Torah-based kingdom ruled by the King of Kings.
- “In the days of those kings the God of heaven will set up a kingdom which will never be destroyed, and that kingdom will not be left for another people; it will crush and put an end to all these kingdoms, but it will itself endure forever.” (Da 2:44)
If all the peoples, including the Hebrews, would bow to the entirely gold statue of Babylon, then it would extend the Babylonian kingdom. Nebuchadnezzar would rule over heaven, and his kingdom would be without end. Isaiah 14 adds details we don’t read in Daniel. So Nebuchadnezzar also built his golden self-image to challenge the “Good Gold” described in the Garden of Eden.
This portion starts from Jacob’s father’s tent, symbolically a “Mishkan” of Beer Sheva (well of oath, completion, seven), to the Temple Mount and Even Shetiyah, to the well of Charan. It maps out
a journey of feasts beginning and ending with a well. In Ezek. 21: 21 it is recorded that the King of Babylon consulted teraphim, and "looked in the liver"; i.e., he made use of magical incantations as well as of the astrological rites common in Babylonia. Strangely, Rachel steals Lavan’s teraphim by which he also divines the future. She hides them in an unclean place, a camel saddle. This tells us that the teraphim did have some power sourced from forces of darkness. Lavan is the Nebuchadnezzar, the King of Babylon, of Jacob’s generation.
Lavan made a strange statement about sending off Jacob’s family with musical instruments. This mirrors all the musical instruments that accompanied the dedication of King Nebuchadnezzar’s image. From what we know of Lavan, he’d have never done what he said. He considered everything Jacob owned “mine.” He intended to kill Jacob and repossess everything. The music was for his own coronation feast. Rachel steals the teraphim, such as Nebuchadnezzar later used to plan his destruction of Jerusalem. In that context, her act is not so reprehensible, but a mother trying to save unborn children from the “later Lavan.”
It is the wells, however, that unlock Jacob’s family’s peril in his Lavanic exile.
- Then Jacob went on his journey, and came to the land of the sons of the east. He looked, and saw a well in the field, and behold, three flocks of sheep were lying there beside it, for from that well they watered the flocks. Now the stone on the mouth of the well was large. When all the flocks were gathered there, they would then roll the stone from the mouth of the well and water the sheep, and put the stone back in its place on the mouth of the well. (Ge 29:1-3)
The first mention of “flocks of sheep” appears in the context of the three flocks awaiting the removal of the Even stone. This is thought to have been a prophetic glimpse into the future for Yaakov. He went to "the east," symbolic of exile. Ezekiel identifies the prophecy of the flocks:
- “Like the flock for sacrifices, like the flock at Jerusalem during her appointed feasts, so will the waste cities be filled with flocks of men. Then they will know that I am the LORD.” (Ezek 36:38)
Historically, there have been three “flocks” lost. The first one was the gradual disappearance of the ten Northern Tribes, Israel. The second was the Jews who went into exile in Babylon. Their descendants can still be identified. The third flock is still lost. It is the flock of Jews that remained after the Babylonian destruction, then after Gedaliah’s murder, fled to Egypt, where they were lost or killed. The Jewish sages comment on the encounter at the well:
- And he looked, and behold! a well in the field…” (Genesis 29:2) This refers to the well. “…and behold! three flocks of sheep…” (ibid.) This refers to Moses, Aaron and Miriam. “…because from that well they would water the flocks…” (ibid.) Because from there each and every one would draw water for his tribe and for his family. “…and a huge rock…” (ibid.) R. Chanina said: This is to say that there was like the mouthful of a small sieve in it. “And all the flocks would gather there and they would roll…” (Genesis 29:3) At the time of the encampments. “…and then they would return the rock onto the mouth of the well, to its place.” (ibid.) At the time of the journeys it would return to its great strength. (Bereishit Rabbah 70)
Like Ezekiel, the preceding midrash equates the flocks of sheep with people, the Israelites, in their journey through the wilderness. Even the three flocks of goats and sheep Jacob builds through deals with Lavan correspond to them.
The well, according to the Rabbis, was one of the things created on the eve of the Sabbath at twilight (M Avot 5:6); they depict it as a wondrous well that flowed from itself, like a rock full of holes (T Sukkah 3:11). The well was portrayed in a mural in the Dura Europus synagogue (that was destroyed in the third century CE). Paul writes of the rock/well in the wilderness:
- “and all drank the same spiritual drink, for they were drinking from a spiritual rock which followed them; and the rock was Christ.” (1 Co 10:4)
Flocks of sheep = Israelites
The next section of midrash explains what the sheep-people at the well are doing:
- This refers to Zion. “…and behold! three flocks of sheep…” (ibid.) This refers to the three pilgrimage festivals. “…because from that well they would water the flocks…” (ibid.) Because from there they would draw the holy spirit. “…and a huge rock…” (ibid.) This refers to the celebration of the water drawing (Simchat Bet Hashoevah). (R. Hoshaya said: why did they call it the celebration of the water drawing? Because from there they would draw the Holy Spirit.) “And all the flocks would gather there…” (Genesis 29:3) They would come all the way from Mevo Chamat to the stream of Egypt. “…and they would roll the rock off the mouth of the well and water the sheep…” (ibid.) Because from there they would draw the Holy Spirit. “…and then they would return the rock onto the mouth of the well, to its place.” (ibid) Left to rest for the next pilgrimage festival...(Bereishit Rabbah 70)
As the rabbis in the midrash pointed out above, this well is seen as prophecy of the water-drawing ceremony on the last day of Sukkot on the Temple Mount, the very location visited by Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, each in their generation. From the well comes the Holy Spirit. Yeshua identifies himself with the rock-well at the traditional ceremony on Sukkot:
- Now on the last day, the great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried out, saying, ‘If anyone is thirsty, let him come to Me and drink. He who believes in Me, as the Scripture said, “'From his innermost being will flow rivers of living water.'” But this He spoke of the Spirit, whom those who believed in Him were to receive; for the Spirit was not yet given, because Jesus was not yet glorified. (Jn 7:37-39)
The Jewish sages see Yaakov’s experience at the well as a prophecy of the exiles:
- R. Yose bar Chanina explained the verse about the exile, “And Jacob said tho them... and they said we are from Charan” (Genesis 29:4) We are running away from the rage of (charono) of the Holy One, blessed be He. “He said to them, 'Do you know Laban the son of Nahor?'…” (Genesis 29:5) Do you know who is going to whiten (lelaven) your iniquities like snow in the future? "And they said, 'we know'" (- as they never lost their hope). "And he said, 'Is there peace with him'; and they said, 'there is peace.'" In the merit of what? "And behold his daughter, Rachel, is coming with the flock." This is [the meaning of] that which is written (Jeremiah 31:15-17), "Rachel weeps for her children... Restrain your eyes from weeping... And there is hope for your future.” (Bereishit Rabbah 70)
The exiled flocks of sheep “whiten,” l’laven in their exile from Jerusalem. Prophetically, the midrash tells us that the people of Charan, all mankind, spoke of hope in one who also would l’laven, purify them in their exile, and of hope of One who could redeem them from that exile so that they (the three flocks) could return. The return of Rachel's children is the key. Charan is “a place dried up, parched.”
וַיֵּצֵא יַעֲקֹב מִבְּאֵר שָׁבַע וַיֵּלֶךְ חָרָֽנָה
“Then Jacob departed from Beersheba and went toward Haran.”
The play-on word is charanah, “his parching.” Entering the promise, or re-entering the Garden, requires a route through “parching.” As his descendants would have to route through the parching wilderness to inherit the Promised Land, so Jacob did not go to acquire a kingdom, but a Bride. He acquired her through pain, turmoil, and harsh service, not money. This is the opposite of the King of Babylon's plan:
- How you have fallen from heaven, O star of the morning, son of the dawn! You have been cut down to the earth, you who have weakened the nations! But you said in your heart, ‘I will ascend to heaven; I will raise my throne above the stars of God, and I will sit on the mount of assembly [moed] in the recesses of the north. I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will make myself like the Most High.’ Nevertheless you will be thrust down to Sheol, to the recesses of the pit.” (Is 14:12-15)
Nebuchadnezzar merely used Daniel’s interpretation of his dream to devise a new plan to build his kingdom all of gold. He thought to extend his kingdom into the heavens [Gan-Eden is low cloud height] like his predecessors Nimrod and the Bavelonian tower-team. The “clouds” are also the Israelites, the great cloud of witnesses to the Stone of the well who followed them in the wilderness. The stars are the children of Abraham who observe the moedim, the feasts. Their home is Jerusalem and the Temple where the moedim are the eternal clock for the flock.
The King of Babylon thought he could rule an eternal kingdom if he could control the Temple Mount, the place where the flocks gathered three times per year to drink anew from the well at the feasts. Every king of Babylon, whether Nimrod, Lavan, Nebuchadnezzar, or many others in history, has fallen and will fall before the King of Kings, the only one who can move the stone from the well for Rachel’s returning flock. Only Rachel leads the flock of his Bride.
“Then strangers will join them and attach themselves to the house of Jacob” suggests Jacob’s prophetic Bride includes people like his brides, related to Abraham, but not descended from him. Jacob—prophetically-Yeshua-the Stone-rolls away the Stone so mankind may drink from the Garden.
Targum Pseudo-Yonatan states that the dust from which man was formed was the dust of the Temple Mount. It was the makom "the place" to which Avraham, Yitzchak, and Yaakov were drawn in their generations. Last week’s portion Toldot, Generations, hints to this generational attraction back to the beginning, returning from the exilic "east of Eden." The sheep are also living stones:
- “What does this mean for each of us? When we return to Jerusalem, we return home in a very basic, elemental sense. The very stones of the Temple Mount are of one piece with our bodies. We are part and parcel of the holy Altar, and that holiest of places is intertwined with our very essence.” (A. Kahn, p. 185)
The Israelite “intra-exile” must wait until the death of the Cohen HaGadol for his exile to come to an end. In the case of Yeshua, a priest after the order of Malkhi-Tzedek, who also ministered and reigned in Jerusalem, his death marked the end of the exiles of mankind. Those three flocks began the journey back to Jerusalem above.
Yeshua rolled away the stone, not only of death and the grave, but he uncovered the well. We have access to the Holy Spirit which moves through the Rivers of Eden while we await resurrection of the body.
The moedim are the signature time-clock of flocks returning to the Rock.
