סֻלָּם

From the study of Genesis 28:12

Range of meaning

This word appears only once in the Hebrew Bible, so its meaning has to be worked out from related words. It is usually linked to the root s-l-l, 'to heap up, cast up, build up (a road)'. That root gives mesillah, a raised highway (Isa 40:3; 62:10, 'build up, build up the highway'), and sollelah, a siege ramp heaped against a wall (2 Sam 20:15). The likely sense is 'something built up for climbing': a stair, ramp or ladder. Many scholars also connect it to Akkadian simmiltu, 'stair, ladder'.

Against the English

KJV, ESV, NASB and BSB keep the traditional 'ladder'. NIV, NLT, WEB and the Jewish Publication Society's translation have 'stairway', and some note 'ramp'. To a modern reader 'ladder' suggests a narrow frame with rungs that one person climbs at a time. That fits poorly with crowds of messengers going both ways at once.

How it drifted

Early translations chose words that covered both senses. The Greek Septuagint has klimax, which can mean ladder or staircase, and the Latin Vulgate has scala, 'ladder, flight of steps'. English 'ladder' (Tyndale, KJV) narrowed this to the rung ladder. Later Hebrew also uses sullam for an ordinary ladder (as in the Mishnah). So the ladder reading is old and not careless, but the biblical-period evidence leans toward a stairway.

Used elsewhere in the period

In the Akkadian myth Nergal and Ereshkigal, Namtar, messenger of the gods, goes up 'the long stairway of heaven' (simmilat šamê) to the gate of the high gods and comes back down. It is a close parallel: a divine messenger, a stairway, ascent and descent, and a heavenly gate (compare 'gate of heaven' in Gen 28:17). Mesopotamian temple-towers (ziggurats) had monumental stairways leading to a shrine at the top, and Babylon's name was explained as 'gate of the god' (bāb-ili). See A. R. Millard, 'The Celestial Ladder and the Gate of Heaven' (1966), and C. Houtman, VT 27 (1977).