A reader objected to my gloss on Jacob's flight into Canaan, asking whether my treatment wasn't irreverent in light of Jacob's later wrestling with the angel. My answer is that Jacob to the time of that wresting is a rat undeserving of reverence, albeit a crafty rat with a good head for business and a fair prospect of making a big splash in this world. In this respect, Jacob is the archetype of every unregenerate man: rat-like, unworthy of reverence, although sometimes commanding a vulgar respect.
Like Jacob, every man has dreamed of a ladder to Heaven (Wordsworth calls this "intimations of immortality"); like Jacob, each man has awoken from this dream and lived like a rat in this world.
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