Drafted by Grok 4.7 on 8 October 2026. First draft. Not independently reviewed. Leningrad Codex, through the Open Scriptures Westminster Leningrad Codex. The written consonants are printed. A Masoretic reading is footnoted when it differs. No Dead Sea reading was substituted unless it was read from a fragment. The Samaritan Pentateuch and the Greek, Syriac, and Latin versions are witnesses, not the default.
1Isaac called Jacob and blessed him. He commanded him, “You must not take a wife from the daughters of Canaan.
2Get up, go to Paddan-aram, to the house of Bethuel your mother’s father, and take a wife from there, from the daughters of Laban your mother’s brother.
3May God Shaddai bless you and make you fruitful and multiply you, so that you become a company of peoples.
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Shaddai is kept as a name. See the glossary. “Almighty” is a later gloss, and it is not printed.
4May he give you the blessing of Abraham, you and your offspring with you, so that you take possession of the land of your sojournings, the land God gave to Abraham.”
5Isaac sent Jacob away, and he went to Paddan-aram, to Laban son of Bethuel the Aramean, the brother of Rebekah, mother of Jacob and Esau.
6Esau saw that Isaac had blessed Jacob and sent him to Paddan-aram to take a wife from there, and that as he blessed him he commanded him, “You must not take a wife from the daughters of Canaan,”
7and that Jacob had obeyed his father and his mother and gone to Paddan-aram.
8Esau saw that the daughters of Canaan were evil in the eyes of Isaac his father.
9So Esau went to Ishmael and took Mahalath, daughter of Ishmael the son of Abraham and sister of Nebaioth, as a wife for himself, in addition to the wives he had.
10Jacob left Beer-sheba and went toward Haran.
11He came upon a certain place and spent the night there, because the sun had set. He took one of the stones of the place, put it at his head, and lay down in that place.
12He dreamed and saw a stairway set on the earth, with its top reaching the sky, and the angels of God were going up and down on it.
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The word sullam occurs only here in this codex. “Stairway” is printed. A ladder is the same object described with a later English habit, and that habit is not followed.
13And Yahweh stood beside him and said, “I am Yahweh, the God of Abraham your father and the God of Isaac. The land on which you are lying, to you I will give it, and to your offspring.
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“Beside him” can also be read “above it,” over the stairway. The Hebrew preposition allows both. “Beside him” is printed.
14Your offspring will be like the dust of the earth, and you will spread west and east and north and south. All the families of the ground will be blessed through you and through your offspring.
15I am with you, and I will guard you wherever you go, and I will bring you back to this ground, for I will not leave you until I have done what I promised you.”
16Jacob woke from his sleep and said, “Surely Yahweh is in this place, and I did not know it.”
17He was afraid and said, “How awesome this place is. This is nothing other than the house of God, and this is the gate of the sky.”
18Jacob rose early in the morning, took the stone that he had put at his head, set it up as a standing stone, and poured oil on its top.
19He named that place Bethel. The name of the city had been Luz at first.
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Bethel means “house of God.”
20Jacob made a vow. He said, “If God will be with me and will guard me on this way that I am going, and will give me bread to eat and clothing to wear,
21and I return in peace to my father’s house, then Yahweh will be my God,
22and this stone that I have set up as a standing stone will be a house of God, and of all that you give me I will give a tenth back to you.”