Genesis 28: Stairway to Heaven

“Your mother’s right about those Hittites, Jacobaleh,” Isaac told his son. “You can do better. But none of these Canaanites, either! I mean, you can date them, but you wouldn’t want to marry one, you know what I mean? We have standards in this family. Now I want you to head off to Paddan-Aram and marry one of your uncle’s girls. Keep it in the family, right, boy? Heh, heh.” Jacob headed off to find the cousin of his dreams, wondering if maybe his brother Esau hadn’t gotten the better end of the deal.

Esau still hoped to make a good impression on his father. Snooping on Jacob, he learned how his parents felt about the Canaanite women, so in order to impress them, he took a third wife, only this time taking care to marry one of Ishmael’s daughters. Ishmael was only his father’s half-brother, so it’s like they weren’t even related.

Jacob walked on to the town of Haran, in Paddan-Aram, where Uncle Laban and all those single young cousins lived. It was a long trip, lasting more than a day. As night fell, Jacob arrived in the town of Luz. There was nowhere to stay there, so he found a stable behind an inn and… wait, wrong testament. Jacob just laid down on a bare patch of ground, grabbed a stone, and drifted off into luxurious sleep.

The cold desert night and the stone pillow didn’t impede his dreams, and he had a doozy. A stairway reached from the ground up to heaven, and God’s angels were going up and climbing down it, apparently not having yet earned their wings. Jacob wasn’t alarmed, now. God was on the ground with Jacob, and introduced Himself. “I am Yahweh, the God of your grandpa Abraham and the God of your dad Isaac. See this land all around here? See this town of Luz?”

“You mean this empty desert and all these rocks, and this town full of Luzers? Sure.”

“Well, I’m giving it to you and your descendants.”

“Gee, thanks.”

“You’re gonna have a lot of descendants, too. As many as there are bits of dust in this desert. They’ll spread out in all directions, and everyone in the world will think the world of you. I’ll make sure it all works out, too, and stick with you wherever you go. You can come back here whenever you want to see your dust and rocks and Luzers again.”

Jacob woke up. “God lives here!” he said, the desert getting warmer as the sun rose. “I guess maybe these rocks and dust are worth something, after all. But I’ll be damned if I’m going to call myself a Luzer. I’ll call this place… um… Bethel. House of God. Changing the name is a bit like polishing a turd, but after those stunts I pulled on my brother to snag his inheritance, I feel like I’ve gotten the knack for exaggeration.”

Jacob then swears that if God really does come through for him and doesn’t let harm come to him on his journey, and keeps him fed and clothed all along the way, only then will he make Him his God. He took his rock-pillow, poured oil on it, and set it up to be the pillar for a house of God. “A few more stones and it might actually look like a pillar,” Jacob said. “Hear that, God? Deliver for me, and I’ll pay you 10% of everything you give me. Sweet deal, huh?” God, who owned all things and had the ability to make infinitely more of everything, said nothing, but would have been content just to get a nice thank-you card now and again.

How the Lemon was Invented

Lemons How do you make a lemon? Silly question, isn’t it? You just take the seeds out of one and plant them, and wait for the tree to come up, right? That’s true, but it hasn’t always been that easy. Lemons today are a widely cultivated citrus fruit, with a flavor used in cuisines of countries where no lemon tree would ever grow. You might think that it was just a matter of ancient peoples finding the trees, enjoying their fruit and growing more of them, but that’s not true. The lemon is a human invention that’s maybe only a few thousand years old. The first lemons came from East Asia, possibly southern China or Burma. (These days, some prefer to refer to Burma as Myanmar . I’ll try to stay out of that controversy here and stick to fruit.) The exact date of the lemon’s first cultivation is not known, but scientists figure it’s been around for more than 4,000 years. The lemon is a cross breed of several fruits. One f...

The Massachusetts Codfish License Plate Fiasco of 1928

A 1928 Massachusetts license plate with a bad omen! 1928 was a bad year for the Massachusetts codfish yield. Whose fault was it? The Massachusetts Registry of Motor Vehicles', of course—or you might think so, to listen to some of the irate fishermen that year. The problem started with the new license plate design. At the time, it was common for states to issue brand new license plates every year, and Massachusetts was no exception. The new plates for 1928 featured something revolutionary, too: it was the first time any state put a picture of anything on the plate. Since Massachusetts was known for cod, the picture the RMV chose was, logically, a codfish. It appeared at the bottom of the plate. In the bottom left-hand corner was the year, 1928. In the bottom right-hand corner was the state, written “Mass.” And in the middle was the codfish—the first picture of anything that ever appeared on an American license plate...

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One of the greatest inventors of the ancient world was Heron Alexandrinus, aka Hero of Alexandria, who racked up an incredible 80 inventions throughout his lifetime in the first century CE. One of Heron’s remarkable inventions was an early (and possibly the first) steam engine. But one that we moderns might least expect is one that we seldom associate with the ancient world: the vending machine. Heron’s vending machine sold one thing: holy water. He invented it in order to stop the theft of holy water from the temples. The way it worked was you’d put a 5 drachma coin in a slot. The coin would land on one end of a lever which, when depressed, would allow holy water to trickle out of a spout. As long as the coin was balanced on the end of the lever, the water would keep coming. The coin would remain balanced for a short while. When it dropped off the lever, a counterweight was released, closing the spout and preventing anyone from tak...

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