How Many Angels Can Climb on Jacob's Ladder?

Q. Gen 28: "a ladder... angels... ascending and descending upon it." Do these angels ascend or descend one at a time, or can more than one angel traverse the ladder at once? Can one angel ascend at the same time another is descending upon the ladder? Could the ladder of Jacob's dream have been a double cleated ladder that allows ascending and descending at the same time? Thanks!

A. Thank you for your question, which was forwarded to my attention. Your hypothesis of a double-cleated ladder is certainly an elegant solution, but I don't know that it's a necessary one. I have several reasons for this.

First, how wide was the ladder in Jacob's dream? For all I know, it was sixteen feet wide and could accommodate multiple lanes of angelic traffic.

Second, angels are spiritual beings, so they need not take up any physical space (though we may perceive them as doing so). Like the medieval question about how many angels can "dance on the head of a pin," I don't know that angels can't pass through one another if going opposite directions on a ladder.

Finally, as noted, Jacob saw this ladder in a dream. In dreams, we accept things that defy explanation. Are you walking in the sky? Are your hands made of ivory? These are things we can see in a dream and just roll with. We might say they make no sense once we wake up, but things in dreams need not conform with our earthly experiences.

Bottom line, I have no reason to assume that angels must conform with OSHA rules for ladder safety. In fact, they probably don't.

I would be remiss if I didn't mention the Midrash cited by Rashi on Genesis 28:12: The verse first mentions angels ascending and then it mentions angels descending, which perhaps seems the opposite of what one would expect. He explains that the angels who accompanied Jacob while in Israel were not allowed to leave that land, so they ascended the ladder back to Heaven, after which the angels who were to accompany Jacob outside of Israel came down. According to this explanation, the question you ask never really arises (though the explanation cited by Rashi is not the only way to understand the phenomenon).

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