The stories in the Old Testament foreshadow future events -- not so much historical events, but changes in the spiritual states of humankind.

In the inner meaning, the story of Jacob, and his twelve sons, and Joseph and his dreams, deals with people's eventual rejection of the Divine truths that they would receive from the Lord in the Christian church, and their acceptance of falsities instead.

Specifically, this chapter is about the way that some theologians in the Christian church developed the idea of salvation by faith alone, when the Lord really wants us to conjoin faith and charity in our lives.

This seems like a stretch - that a story from 3500+ years ago could be foreshadowing modern theological arguments. And yet, human beings, as partly-spiritual creatures, are always players in a big, long spiritual story - and the Old Testament stories are archetypes for things we wrestle with in our own lives. For the details of this story's meaning, look at Arcana Coelestia 4665, and the following passages.

Here is an excerpt from Swedenborg's "Arcana Coelestia" that helps start explain the inner meaning of this chapter:

"The subject treated of in this chapter in the internal sense is the Divine truths which are from the Lord‘s Divine Human, that in course of time they have been rejected in the church, and that at last falsities have been received in their stead. Specifically, those are described who are in faith separate from charity, in that they are against the Lord’s Divine Human." AC 4665.