God is Here

Jacob awoke from his sleep and said, “Surely the LORD is present in this place, and I did not know it!”

ואנכי לא ידעתי, if I had known that this was a holy site I would not have chosen this site to sleep on. It is possible that this dream represented the beginning of Yaakov’s prophetic visions. This is why he had not been aware of the sanctity of the site until after his dream, seeing that this was the first time G’d had revealed Himself to him in any manner.

When Jacob said: יש השם במקום הזה, that G'd is in this place, he meant that G'd is present at this site all the time, in contrast to other sites. This is why G'd wanted him to spend the night there in order to communicate with him there. Jacob apologised for not having prepared himself for a divine revelation; had he been aware of the significance of that site he would surely have done so. Prophecy requires the recipient to first prepare himself mentally. Perhaps if Jacob had prepared himself to become the recipient of a message from G'd he might have prophesied while awake instead of while dreaming. This may have been what he bemoaned in this verse. Rashi explains simply that Jacob meant that if he had known the holy nature of that site he would not have allowed himself to go to sleep there. If that were the only meaning of Jacob's words we could say to him (Rashi) that Jacob then would not have experienced all the promises G'd made to him during his dream. We therefore need to include what I have just written in order to explain the verse satisfactorily.