← Jacob’s Ladder: the daf

Parashat Vayeitzei · Genesis 28:10–18

Eleven Ladders

Jacob’s dream in the Hebrew and eleven translations, ten ladders and stairways and one ramp, sent word for word to an AI image model, then retried with new instructions, with midrash as the prompt, and set beside seven centuries of real art.

What we’ve learned so far

  • Words for physical things steer the picture.How many stones, where God stands, ladder or stairs. With the dream verses alone, God’s position followed the wording in eighteen of twenty images where the wording was clear. Both misses were Everett Fox’s “over against him,” old English for “facing him,” which the model read as “above.”
  • Words for God do not.LORD, YHWH, יהוה, GOD, the Eternal: in all forty-eight translation images, God has a human body, usually a glowing, bearded man.
  • The instruction does.One added sentence, “Do not depict God as a person,” turned God into light in both images. The Sinai midrash left an empty throne.
  • A translator’s note is a lens too.Robert Alter’s “ramp” gave one ramp in four images. Adding his reading of it as a ziggurat gave ziggurats in both images.
  • The machine’s God is borrowed from Christian art.Asked for a medieval Hebrew manuscript, it still painted halos. The one medieval Jewish example on the Real art tab shows no God at all.
  • Midrash makes vivid prompts.An altar ramp, a burning Sinai, angels comparing the sleeper with his likeness on high, a nursemaid over a cradle.

Round one: the full passage

Genesis 28:10–18 in the Hebrew and eleven translations, each sent word for word, without its footnotes, with the same short instruction. Jump to a text:

How the images were made

Instruction

Create a single illustration of the following passage. Depict only what this text describes. Do not include any words, captions, or lettering in the image.
[the full text of Genesis 28:10–18 in one translation]

Text
Each translation’s own words for the verses, as published, with the edition’s apparatus removed: footnotes and their markers, verse numbers, Kehot’s page references, and Torah Yesharah’s Hebrew source citations. The model never saw the footnote that NJPS, the Contemporary Torah, and the Revised JPS attach to “stairway” (“Or ‘ramp’; others ‘ladder’”), Fox’s note that others say “ramp” or “stairway,” or the Revised JPS note that “angels” is literally “messengers.”
Model
Google’s gemini-3-pro-image, called through the Gemini API
Held constant
The instruction above, the model, and a 16:9 frame. No style, era, or art direction was given, so anything that varies comes from the text or from chance.
Runs
Two images per text, twenty-four in all, generated September 25–26, 2026 (Robert Alter’s translation was added on the 26th). Two rolls per text show which features hold steady and which are luck.

Two translations, two physical details apart

The 1917 JPS and the King James read almost alike. Both say “thee” and “thou,” both say “ladder,” and both say “the angels of God.” They differ on two physical details.

JPS 1917

  • took one of the stones of the place, and put it under his head
  • the LORD stood beside him
StairsGod besideOne stoneGod appears twice: atop the stairs and as a pale figure at Jacob’s side.
LadderGod at topOne stoneSame text, second roll: God only at the top.

King James Version 1611

  • took of the stones of that place, and put them for his pillows
  • the LORD stood above it
LadderGod at topHeap of stonesJacob sleeps on stacked stones; God is enthroned at the top.
StairsGod at topHeap of stonesA pile of stones for a pillow. Jacob also appears leaving Beersheba.

The King James images show a heap of stones and God at the top of the ladder, both times. The JPS 1917 images show a single stone both times and put God at Jacob’s side in one of the two.

What the translations changed

Where God stands

Verse 13 says נִצָּב עָלָיו, nitzav alav. Alav can mean “over it,” the ladder, or “over him,” Jacob. The same words describe the three visitors standing near Abraham (Genesis 18:2), so some translators render it “beside him.” Everett Fox’s “over against him” is old English for “facing him,” and his own note points to that verse. Robert Alter’s “poised over him” keeps the ambiguity, and his note says it could equally mean “on it,” the ramp.

With the whole passage to illustrate, the model usually put God at the top of the ladder. “Beside him” held in seven of eight images, but “by his side,” “over against him,” “over him,” and “guarding him” all ended at the top. Alter’s “poised over him” was read as “on it” both times.

The Rabbis argued this first. In B’reishit Rabbah 69:3, Rabbi Chiya Rabbah and Rabbi Yannai disagree: one reads alav as on the ladder, the other as on Jacob. Rashi follows the second: God stood over Jacob to guard him.

beside himJPS 1917, NJPS, Contemporary Torah, RJPS
7 of 8 God at Jacob’s side
by his sideBible in Basic English
0 of 2 God at Jacob’s side
over against him,” “over him,” “guarding himFox, Kehot, Torah Yesharah
0 of 6 God with Jacob
above it,” “upon itKJV, YLT
4 of 4 God at the top
נִצָּב עָלָיו,” “poised over himthe Hebrew and Alter, either reading
4 of 4 God at the top

One stone or many

Verse 11 has Jacob take מֵאַבְנֵי הַמָּקוֹם, “from the stones of the place.” Verse 18 has him set up “the stone.” Each translator settles the count, and the model follows without exception.

Rashi saw the same tension. On 28:11 he says Jacob arranged the stones around his head against wild animals, then tells how the stones quarreled over which would pillow the righteous man, until God made them one (Talmud Chullin 91b).

Alter adds a motif. He notes that stones as pillows are poorly attested, mentions Rashi’s reading of a stone set beside the head for protection, and cites J. P. Fokkelman: stones follow Jacob through his story, from this one to the pillar, the stone on the well, and the heap he piles up with Laban.

one of the stonesJPS 1917, BBE, NJPS, Fox, Contemporary Torah, Alter, RJPS, Torah Yesharah
16 of 16 a single rock
of the stones … for his pillowsKJV, YLT
4 of 4 a heap of stones
around his body and headKehot
2 of 2 stones ringing Jacob

Ladder or stairway

Sulam appears nowhere else in the Bible. The older translations say “ladder.” NJPS and the translations built on it say “stairway,” Basic English says “steps,” and Robert Alter says “a ramp.” “Stairway” works almost every time. “Ladder” works about two times in three; the rest drift into grand staircases, probably because Western art has so often painted this scene that way. Alter’s “ramp” became a staircase both times. NJPS, the Contemporary Torah, and the Revised JPS each hedge in a footnote, “Or ‘ramp’; others ‘ladder,’” and Fox notes that others say “ramp” or “stairway.” The prompts carried only each translation’s first choice.

Two ramps. Alter argues that “its top reaching the heavens” and “the gate of the heavens” echo the Mesopotamian ziggurat, so the sulam is probably “a vast ramp with terraced landings.” The midrash reached a ramp first: Bar Kappara reads the sulam as the ramp of the altar (B’reishit Rabbah 68:12). The altar had a ramp because the Torah forbids steps: “Do not ascend My altar by steps” (Exodus 20:23). In the Temple, the priests climbed a ramp thirty-two cubits long (Mishnah Middot 3:3).

stairway,” “stepsBBE, NJPS, Contemporary Torah, RJPS
7 of 8 drawn as stairs
ladderKJV, YLT, JPS 1917, Fox, Torah Yesharah, Kehot, and סֻלָּם in the Hebrew (in modern Hebrew, “ladder”)
9 of 14 drawn as a ladder
a rampAlter
0 of 2 drawn as a ramp

What they could not change

Messengers, prayers, and the name of God

Some of the most carefully argued choices in these translations left no trace. “Messengers” still produced winged angels; one Fox image has a single climber without wings. Torah Yesharah replaces the angels with prayers going up and salvation coming down, and got angels in one image and wingless human figures in the other.

God’s name appears as the LORD, Jehovah, YHWH, יהוה, GOD, the ETERNAL, and the Eternal. In every image God is a man in robes, usually glowing and bearded, in a look borrowed from Christian devotional art. The two gender-sensitive translations made no difference.

A strong question for the room. An image model is also a translator, and it brings a tradition with it: whatever art dominated its training. Jewish reluctance to picture God will not show up unless the person writing the prompt puts it there. The Revised JPS offers one way in: its note says the one standing beside Jacob may be an agent, one of the angels, speaking on God’s behalf.

Where the wings come from. No mal’ach in the Tanakh is described with wings; the winged beings are the seraphim and the cherubim (Isaiah 6:2; Exodus 25:20). Artists added the wings, Jewish artists included: the Sister Haggadah on the Real art tab gives its angels wings.

messengers of GodFox, Contemporary Torah, YLT, Alter
8 of 8 winged angels anyway
the LORD,” “YHWH,” “יהוה,” “GOD,” “the Eternalall twelve texts
24 of 24 God drawn as a man in robes

Other things to notice

  • Commentary becomes scenery.Kehot says God “contracted the entire Land of Israel” beneath Jacob, and one of its images runs light through the ground under him. The other draws a map of the Land with people and flocks spreading in four directions, but that comes from verse 14, which every translation carried; a Fox image draws a similar map. Torah Yesharah names the place where Abraham bound Isaac, and one of its images puts a stone altar on the ridge.
  • The whole story in one frame.Every prompt carried all nine verses, so most images show Jacob twice, asleep at night and anointing the pillar at dawn, the way medieval painters told a story in a single panel.
  • Style barely moved.The “thee and thou” translations did not produce old-master paintings. Nearly everything came back in the same modern illustrated-Bible look.
  • Instructions slip.The Hebrew prompt produced garbled English banners in one image, an RJPS image lettered its direction arrows, and a Torah Yesharah image came back as a narrow page padded with blur.
  • How big is the stone?Alter, citing Gerhard von Rad, notes that cultic pillars were usually several feet high, so setting one up would take Herculean strength. Rashi sees the same strength in the next episode, where Jacob rolls the stone off the well “as easily as one draws the stopper from the mouth of a bottle” (Rashi on Genesis 29:10). Compare the stone under Jacob’s head with the pillar he anoints in these images.
  • A pillar the Torah later forbids.Jacob’s pillar is a matzevah, and Deuteronomy 16:22 forbids erecting one, “for such the ETERNAL your God detests.” Rashi there says the pillar was beloved in the patriarchs’ day and became hateful once the Canaanites made it a rite of idolatry.
  • A nameless place?Alter points out that “place” (makom) comes up six times in this short story, which turns an anonymous spot into Bethel. Rashi hears the Hebrew’s “the place,” which JPS 1917 keeps, as a place already known: Mount Moriah, where Abraham bound Isaac (Rashi on Genesis 28:11). B’reishit Rabbah 68:9 goes further: God is called HaMakom, “the Place,” because God is the place of the world, and the world is not God’s place. Most images show open, empty country, and only a few put a town on the horizon.