And he dreamed that there was a ladder: this may need to be adjusted to say, as in Good News Translation, “He dreamed that he saw….” Some translations prefer to say “While he was asleep he had a dream….” Ladder is an inadequate translation of the Hebrew in the context of angels going up and coming down. The word intends to convey the image of a stairway or ramp with wide steps. The New Revised Standard Version footnote says “Or stairway or ramp.” Such long stairways were well known in Babylonian temple towers except, of course, that they did not actually reach heaven.

Set up on the earth: that is, the foot of the stairway rested on the ground. Note Good News Translation‘s rendering. We may also say “that went from the ground to the sky.” In some languages the most natural way to speak about the stairway is to say “The bottom end was on the earth and the top end reached right up to heaven.”

And the top of it reached to heaven: in many languages the term or expression chosen to translate heaven will mean both “sky” and “place where God dwells.” But for languages in which there are different terms, “sky” is probably more appropriate in this context. At this point of the description of the dream, we have a picture of how the stairway is located in space, in which “reaching to the sky” is paired with “standing on the ground.” The fact that the place is holy and a “gateway to heaven” is something that Jacob discovers later, as he contemplates his dream after he has woken up.

And behold, the angels of God were ascending and descending on it: behold indicates most probably that what is about to be said is both vivid and unusual. See 22.11 for “angel of the LORD.” Here angels is plural and God translates ʾelohim. The words used to translate ascending and descending should be appropriate for going up and down on a stairway or on a series of steps, and the verb forms should describe continuous movement.

Quoted with permission from Reyburn, William D. and Fry, Euan McG. A Handbook on Genesis. (UBS Helps for Translators). New York: UBS, 1997. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .