Book of the Rolls

Book of the Rolls, Gibson1901, printed page 42

L126 f. 126b 42 KITAB AL-MAGALL. a wall to it. But the town which was called Masr (Egypt), the king of the Copts had built. Ishmael was the first to work with a hand-mill, and it was called the mill of the kingdom. After one hundred and thirty years of the life of Isaac, that is in the seventy-seventh year of Jacob, God blessed Jacob, and he received the blessings of Isaac, and the blessing of Esau his brother by deceit. He journeyed to the land of the East. While he was on his journey, behold, a deep sleep came upon him. He prepared below his head seven stones and slept upon them. In his sleep he saw a ladder of fire whose top was in heaven, and its bottom on the earth. On it Angels were descending from it and ascending, and he saw the Lord sitting on the top. When he awoke he said, “ Doubtless this place is the house of God.” He took the stones which were beneath his head and built them into an altar and anointed it with oil, and vowed there that he would give to God the tenth of all his goods as an offering. The power of this vision, O my son Clement, is not difficult to those who know, for it is a prophecy of the coming of our Lord the Christ. Verily the ladder which Jacob saw was a sign of the Crucifixion, and the Angels coming down from Heaven [were] for the Gospel to Zacharia, and Mary, and the Magi and the shepherds. The place of the Lord’s seat at the top of the ladder was like the descent of our God the Christ from Heaven for our salvation, and the place where Jacob saw it was a type of the Church, which is being interpreted, the House of God. The stones are a type of the altar, and their being anointed with oil [a type] of the union of Godhead with Manhood. The vow which he made of a tenth of his goods is a type of the Eucharist. Jacob journeyed from the place of the vision till he came to the town of his uncle Laban. He saw a well of water, at which three flocks of sheep were lying down ; over the mouth of the well was a great stone. Rachel, the daughter of Jacob’s uncle, was standing there with the sheep. Jacob came near to the well, removed the stone from its mouth, and watered the sheep that were with Rachel. Then he approached Rachel and kissed her. Jacob’s uncovering of the well was a type of Baptism, which was veiled from of old, and