Yaakov woke from his sleep and said, “Surely God is in this place, and I did not know.”
What it teaches
Awe of Heaven. Always remembering before Whom we stand, and so keeping away from wrong.
The Torah teaches that awe of Heaven is born of knowing: first Yaakov realises that God is in the place where he slept, and only afterwards are we told that he was afraid. Knowing before Whom we stand changes how we see a place: in the morning, Yaakov names it Beit El.
The lesson
Awe of Heaven awakens when we discover God was here even when we did not know.
Yaakov leaves home alone, sleeps on open ground and dreams of a ladder joining earth to heaven.
For children, teens and adults
Yaakov is leaving the only home he has known, on his own, with his brother furious at him and no idea when or whether he will come back. This is the lowest point of his life so far: no family, no house, no plan beyond getting to Charan. He stops for the night because the sun goes down, not because the spot means anything to him. What happens next tells him he was wrong about the spot, and wrong about being alone.
The verses are from Miqra according to the Masorah (Wikisource, CC BY-SA 4.0), via Sefaria, without the cantillation marks. On this site the four-letter Name is written ה׳.
