The key to the ladder image as seen in the medieval midrashic traditions is the unfolding of history, which the midrashic authors thought would culminate in the fulfillment of God’s promise to Jacob and a restoration of Jewish sovereignty. Needless to say, the restoration would be based on the righteousness of the faithful. Such a message of the unfolding of a divine process of historical fulfillment proved to be an enduring and powerful one. 

The notion of God’s ultimate deliverance from the trials of historical oppression was central to the Negro spiritual “We are Climbing Jacob’s Ladder”. The ladder here, like in the midrashic account, is symbolic of the stages of history. Note, however, that unlike the midrashic account, the spiritual's lyrics present an active human agent, climbing the ladder, fighting one's way upward, bringing about the fulfillment of the prophecy of freedom through human courage and action. Here is the singer and early civil rights’ activist Paul Robeson performing the song in New York’s Carnegie Hall:

A perhaps less powerful version performed by The Boss in 2006. Note the lyrical differences between the Robeson and the Springsteen versions. Gone from Robeson's version are many things, the historical pathos, the notion of struggle, the idea of fighting one's way from bottom to top, the understanding of history as an unfolding of something spiritual, meaningful and ultimately just, an earned redemption through action. Instead, Springsteen's climb seems an easy, casual, communal hike up the gradual slope of a small hill. Beyond the easy of the climb, Springsteen emphasizes the universality of the ladder story. "Brothers and sisters, all" are making their way from rung to rung. This universality stands in contrast to both the Jewish accounts and the idea of the ladder as metaphor for African Americans' struggle for freedom in the United States. 

The notion of Jacob’s ladder or stairway continued to inspire contemplation about the relations between the earthly and the heavenly realms well into modern times. Consider the lyrics of the 1971 Led Zeppelin song “Stairway to Heaven.”

Artistic interpretations of Jacob’s dream of the ladder abound. 

Christians living in antiquity interpreted things differently. We see an example of a Christian re-imagining of Jacob’s ladder in the New Testament gospel of John. At the end of the first chapter, Jesus tells Nathaniel, “Verily, verily, I say unto you, Hereafter ye shall see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of man.” For the author of the gospel of John, the “ladder,” which bridges heaven and earth, God and man, is Jesus Christ. Such an introduction of Christ into the ladder narrative is clearly seen in the following painting by the Romantic artist William Blake:

For Blake, the connection between the ladder and Christ is established through the figure of Jacob, the sleeper. The Jacob here is a highly Romanticized portrait -- perfect in features like that of a sculpture of a Greek god. Indeed, the reference to Apollo and more specifically to the curly haired archer of the Apollo Belvedere seems unmistakable. So Jacob has been refashioned as Greek, taking him out of the Levatine/Jewish context and into the heart of the classical European tradition, a tradition re-embraced passionately in the 18th and 19th centuries. But look how this Greek god is lying. The position -- arms splayed out, head to the side, legs dangling down -- evokes the crucifixion of Christ. Now our Greek god has turned into the Greek Christian God, the foundation stone of European identity, the Westernized Christ. The dream in Blake's vision emanates directly from the head of the dreamer -- from the mind of Christ (on the cross?). And the journey up the ladder? Blake's picture is the opposite of the struggle proposed by Robeson or the medieval Jewish writers. This ascension is no struggle. Blake's graceful and beautiful figures move up the spiral staircase with ease. They are relaxed, well clothed, with bounteous food, drink, and music. They are greeted by others as family, led or accompanied by cherubs. The colors are soft, the way is gradual, the encounters harmonious and peaceful. This, Blake, implies is the bridge of Christ-- a love bridge. This is far from the tension-filled and violent imaginings of the medieval Jewish mind, grappling with a seemingly endless number of historical calamities. This is a new type of connection between heaven and earth.   

Marc Chagall, "Jacob's Dream": 

Chagall presents a very different image and interpretation of the ladder in his painting than Blake. His Jacob is no Greek ideal of masculine beauty. Instead, the Jacob here resembles something out of the medieval icon tradition. His body is deformed, his coloring is striking and unsettling, he is scruffy and weirdly thin. His general appearance gives the impression of suffering -- much like a medieval ascetic would suffer from purposeful self-denial in the name of a higher calling. The pained expression on Jacob's face reinforces this view. Chagall's ladder also seems to contrast with Blake's ziggurat in nearly every possible way. Here we have a strict verticality. Chagall's rickety wooden ladder appears difficult, precarious to climb. It is thin, emphasizing that it can accommodate one individual at a time. Figures, birds and angels, swirl around the ladder and it is unclear whether they are there to help or to hinder the ascent. For sure, the presence of what appears to be a mythical bird of pray casts an ominous shadow on the scene. At the bottom left, a trapdoor seems to be sucking in an unlucky candidate. At the very least, Chagall is representing the connection between heaven and earth as a fraught one. The dreamer is tortured. The ultimate goal still shrouded in dark mystery.    

Anselm Kiefer, "Sefer Hechaloth" (2002):

The German Anselm Kiefer provides one of the most arresting representations of Jacob's vision of the ladder. Here we find a totally depopulated realm, a landscape of grays, blacks, metal and ashes. It reminds not of the past but of some dystopian future -- an end of the industrial era, perhaps, a failure of modern civilization and a regressing back. Amid this landscape the ladder appears. On its stairs, as find burnt books, melancholy remnants of the great literary traditions of the world. Truth is no longer found here - perhaps any truth that once came from books must now be harbored in the body and its spirit. Te organic must persevere through a denuded realm of inorganic destruction. Whether this is possible or not, whether ascension upon such a path can be accomplished is certainly open to doubt. And yet the ladder still goes up -- as it also goes down. Behind the ladder, a certain luminosity implies the existence of the divine connection still intact. The composition of the piece with the higher arm of the ladder stretching upwards in an aspirational way reinforces the idea that the connection between the earth and the heavens has not fully vanished, despite the utter horrors of industrial society and the industrial regime of death unleashed by the Nazis against Europe's Jews. Like in the medieval mind, history has intervened into this ladder narrative, but it is no longer History as divine plan, it is history at its most mundane, gruesome, at its most meaningless.