According to the biblical account, Abraham’s grandson Jacob, later known as Israel, departed Beersheba on the way to Haran in Mesopotamia (Genesis 28:10-22). On route he rested for the night using a large stone as a pillow. During the night he had a dream as follows:

…behold, a ladder was set on the earth with its top reaching to heaven; and behold, the angels of God were ascending and descending on it. And behold, the LORD stood above it and said, “I am the LORD, the God of your father Abraham and the God of Isaac; the land on which you lie, I will give it to you and to your descendants. “Your descendants will also be like the dust of the earth, and you will spread out to the west and to the east and to the north and to the south; and in you and in your descendants shall all the families of the earth be blessed. “Behold, I am with you and will keep you wherever * you go, and will bring you back to this land; for I will not leave you until * I have done what I have promised you.” (Genesis 28:12-15 NASB).

In the morning he awoke, took the stone he had rested on and erected it as a pillar stone as a dwelling place for a spirit being. He said “…this stone, which I have set up as a pillar, will be God’s house…” (Genesis 28:22 NASB).

Do you find this a bit strange? At that point in his life, did Jacob think that Almighty God would live in a stone?

In Genesis 28:17 NASB Jacob said, “How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God…” He named the place Bethel or “house of God.” What in the culture of his time would have given him that idea?

Remember, the patriarchal family was Mesopotamian and Mesopotamian sociocultural traits were present in their family. Mesopotamians believed that gods not only lived in inanimate objects but that they had territories such that there were a number of gods of the land. Therefore, each Mesopotamian settlement had its own god or gods. The thinking was somewhat animistic. If people moved from one settlement to another they would worship the god or gods who they believed resided in that settlement. Their gods were place-bound.

In this case, Jacob encountered the God of the Hebrew Scriptures after departing Beersheba on the way to Haran in Mesopotamia (Genesis 28:10-22). As a Mesopotamian, he understood the place he encountered God was the land where God lived. Accordingly, he set up a pillar of stone as a marker and named the place Bethel (the house of God).

Years later, he again encountered God at the same location on his return from Paddan-aram [Mesopotamia] (Genesis 35:9-16). The Bible tells of two additional accounts where people understood gods to be associated with the land.

First, at the time of Elisha, Naaman, commander of the army of the king of Syria was healed of leprosy. He then asked:

[P]lease let your servant be given two mule-loads of earth; for your servant will no longer offer either burnt offering or sacrifice to other gods, but to the Lord. Yet in this thing may the Lord pardon your servant: when my master [the king of Syria] goes into the temple of Rimmon to worship there, and he leans on my hand, and I bow down in the temple of Rimmon–when I bow down in the temple of Rimmon, may the Lord please pardon your servant in this thing. (bracketed insertion mine); (2 Kings 5:17-18 NKJV).

Naaman took the Israelite soil home with him so that when he worshipped the God of the land of Israel, while residing in Syria, the God of the land of Israel would be there as he brought the land (the soil) with him. For his mind the God of Israel was place-bound. This concept was common in the lands of the Fertile Crescent including Canaan and Egypt.

Second, many years later, the Assyrians conquered the nation of Israel and deported Israelite captives from the region of Samaria to other parts of the Assyrian Empire. Then the king of Assyria,

. . . brought people from Babylon, Cuthah, Ava, Hamath, and from Sepharvaim, and placed them in the cities of Samaria instead of the children of Israel; and they took possession of Samaria and dwelt in its cities. And it was so, at the beginning of their dwelling there, that they did not fear the Lord; therefore the Lord sent lions among them, which killed some of them. So they spoke to the king of Assyria, saying, “The nations whom you have removed and placed in the cities of Samaria do not know the rituals of the God of the land; therefore He has sent lions among them, and indeed, they are killing them because they do not know the rituals of the God of the land.” Then the king of Assyria commanded, saying, “Send there one of the priests whom you brought from there; let him go and dwell there, and let him teach them the rituals of the God of the land.” Then one of the priests whom they had carried away from Samaria came and dwelt in Bethel, and taught them how they should fear the Lord. (2 Kings 17:24-28 NKJV).

In both cases we see Gentile pagans limited in their perception of the nature of the real God – who is by no means place-bound. As a Mesopotamian, on both occasions Jacob encountered God at Bethel, he believed that the God of Abraham and Isaac was place-bound. Recognize that Jacob’s coming to understand the reality of the one true God was a process that took time in a world where the natural and supernatural were intimately intertwined.

God called Jacob out of the world of his day and Jacob had to learn about God and His way just as we do. Today we live in a secular world, having bifurcated the natural and supernatural, and it is difficult for secular people to conceive of the alternative.

Mesopotamians believed that gods or spirits literally resided in physical matter as dwelling places including rocks and wood. Indeed, the Mesopotamians had hundreds if not thousands of gods or deities. They erected their temple towers, or ziggurats, as houses for these spirits as well as places to worship and make offerings to them. Ziggurats played a role in the cults of many cities in ancient Mesopotamia. Archaeologists have discovered nineteen of these structures in sixteen cities. The existence of another ten is known from literary sources.

A ziggurat of the ancient Mesopotamian valley had the form of a terraced pyramid of successively receding stories. The tower had military value as a defendable position in an otherwise flat terrain and served as a place to flee when there was a flood. Floods in the flood plains of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers were frequent in the Middle Bronze Age and settlements had to prepare for them. The earliest examples of the ziggurat date from the end of the third millennium BCE. The infamous tower of Babel was a tower ziggurat.

Genesis 11:1-9 provides some insight into the matter.

    Now the whole earth [“the whole land” i.e., Babylon and the region to the west of Babylon] had one language and one speech. And it came to pass, as they journeyed from the east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar, and they dwelt there [where they built Babylon]. Then they said to one another, “Come, let us make bricks and bake them thoroughly.” They had brick for stone, and they had asphalt for mortar. And they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city, and a tower [a ziggurat] whose top is in the heavens; let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be scattered abroad over the face of the whole earth.” But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower [the ziggurat] which the sons of men had built. And the Lord said, “Indeed the people are one and they all have one language, and this is what they begin to do; now nothing that they propose to do will be withheld from them. Come, let Us go down and there confuse their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech.” So the Lord scattered them abroad from there over the face of all the earth [“the land”], and they ceased building the city. Therefore its name is called Babel, because there the Lord confused the language of all the earth [“the land”]; and from there the Lord scattered them abroad over the face of all the earth [the region to the west of Babylon]. (bracketed insertions added) by editor); (Genesis 11:1-9 NKJV).

The implication is that this tower ziggurat was the first of its type and built by Babel’s founder Nimrod. Note Genesis 10:8-12:

   Cush [a son of Ham and grandson of Noah] begot Nimrod; he began to be a mighty one on the earth. He was a mighty hunter before the Lord; therefore it is said, “Like Nimrod the mighty hunter before the Lord.” And the beginning of his kingdom was Babel, Erech, Accad, and Calneh, in the land of Shinar. From that land he went to Assyria and built Nineveh, Rehoboth Ir, Calah, and Resen between Nineveh and Calah (that is the principal city). (Genesis 10:8-12 NKJV).

The Jewish-Roman historian Flavius Josephus, in his Antiquities of the Jews , recounted history as found in the Hebrew Scriptures and mentioned the Tower of Babel. He wrote that it was Nimrod who had the tower built and that Nimrod was a tyrant who tried to turn people away from God. In this account, God confused the people rather than destroying them because destroying people with the Noachian Flood had not taught them to be godly. Josephus wrote:

Now it was Nimrod who excited them to such an affront and contempt of God. He was the grandson of Ham, the son of Noah, a bold man, and of great strength of hand. He persuaded them not to ascribe it to God, as if it were through his means they were happy, but to believe that it was their own courage which procured that happiness. He also gradually changed the government into tyranny, seeing no other way of turning men from the fear of God, but to bring them into a constant dependence on his power… Now the multitude were very ready to follow the determination of Nimrod and to esteem it a piece of cowardice to submit to God; and they built a tower, neither sparing any pains, nor being in any degree negligent about the work: and, by reason of the multitude of hands employed in it, it grew very high, sooner than anyone could expect; but the thickness of it was so great, and it was so strongly built, that thereby its great height seemed, upon the view, to be less than it really was. It was built of burnt brick, cemented together with mortar, made of bitumen, that it might not be liable to admit water. When God saw that they acted so madly, he did not resolve to destroy them utterly, since they were not grown wiser by the destruction of the former sinners [in the Flood]; but he caused a tumult among them, by producing in them diverse languages, and causing that, through the multitude of those languages, they should not be able to understand one another. The place wherein they built the tower is now called Babylon, because of the confusion of that language which they readily understood before; for the Hebrews mean by the word Babel, confusion… (Josephus, Antiquities ); Whiston 1978:30).

The ziggurat was the focal point of Mesopotamian worship. The settlement was built around the ziggurat and would have been visible for many miles. The derivation of the word ziggurat is from ziqqurratu, which means “rising building” (Akkadian zaqâru, “to rise high”). Architecturally a ziggurat was a platform (later a lofty terrace, built in the shape of a pyramid) crowned by a sanctuary, or “high place.”

In the Far East today we still see spirit houses in residential backyards as dwelling places for spirits. The spirit house is intended to provide a shelter for spirits, which are demons, which could cause problems for the people if not appeased. Residents bring food offerings to the spirit house. Through the ziggurat such spirits would be close to the people.

So it was quite consistent with the beliefs of Jacob’s time that spirits including the Living God would dwell in a mud brick ziggurat, a rock or a piece of wood. This belief, that that spirits dwell in objects, is a form of animism (the belief in the existence of individual spirits that inhabit natural objects). All this should tell us of the limited state of Jacob’s spiritual knowledge about the nature of the God at that point in his life. Jacob encountered the God of Abraham and Isaac who began to reveal himself to him. God had to call Jacob and to open his mind to understand the things of God, just as God opened our minds, removed the spiritual blindness and called us to become part of his people. Jacob had to grow in grace and knowledge as do we.

When Jacob left Laban to return to his own family and country, Rachel took the household gods (teraphim) belonging to her father (Genesis 31:19, 31:30). Now why would the Mesopotamian Laban have idols in his home? What was the function of Mesopotamian household idols?

First, they were obviously objects of worship for many. Laban was an idol worshiper. In the Patriarchal system all under the authority of the patriarch had to follow the gods of the patriarch. That would have been required of Leah and Rachel.

Second, in Mesopotamian terms these were small figurines for spirits to reside in on visiting the household. Today people tend to see these idols as inanimate representations of mythical gods exclusively for purposes of worship. Culturally, however, the people in this Semitic culture believed that spirits routinely visited these household idols to stay awhile or live. Rather than serving only as objects of worship, the Mesopotamians saw such idols as a means of keeping spirits from possessing other objects in their dwellings and from hounding members of the household for not providing suitable quarters for visits by their spirit guests as well.

Third, documents found at Nuzi, in Mesopotamia, indicate that in the patriarchal age the possession of the family’s household gods, such as possessed by Laban, guaranteed to their holder the legal title to his father’s properties. This was probably the chief reason why Laban was so eager to retrieve them (see Genesis 31:30, 33–35). Nuzi records indicate that teraphim were often symbols of property rights and family status. Their possession could indicate that certain privileges had been confirmed by transmitting the ownership of the teraphim (cf. the symbolism of the scepter or of keys to a house). Thus, Rachel’s possession of the teraphim might prove that her husband was not Laban’s servant and that he was entitled to a part of the latter’s estate.