6227. Verses 3-7 And Jacob said to Joseph, God Shaddai showed Himself to me in Luz in the land of Canaan and blessed me. And He said to me, Behold, I am making you fruitful and will cause you to be multiplied, and I will make you into a congregation of peoples, and I will give this land to your seed after you as an everlasting possession. And now your two sons born to you in the land of Egypt, prior to my coming to you, to Egypt, they are mine, Ephraim and Manasseh; as Reuben and Simeon will they be mine. And your offspring ¹ that you beget after them will be yours; they will be called by the name of their brothers in their inheritance. And as for me, when I was coming from Paddan, Rachel died on me in the land of Canaan on the road when there was still a stretch of land to go to Ephrath; and I buried her there on the road to Ephrath, that is, Bethlehem.

'And Jacob said to Joseph' means a communication of the truth of the natural with the internal. 'God Shaddai showed Himself to me in Luz in the land of Canaan' means the Divine appearing within the natural in a previous state. 'And blessed me' means a foretelling about a bestowal of life. 'And he said to me, Behold, I am making you fruitful and will cause you to be multiplied' means a bestowal of life through the good of charity and the truth of faith. 'And I will make you into a congregation of peoples' means an increase without limit. 'And I will give [this] land to [your] seed after you as an everlasting possession' means the Lord's kingdom belonging to those who have that goodness and truth within them. 'And now your two sons born to you in the land of Egypt' means goodness and truth within the natural that come from the internal. 'Prior to my coming to you, to Egypt' means before the truth of the natural existed within factual knowledge there. 'They are mine' means that they are within me. 'Ephraim and Manasseh' means the Church's understanding and will. 'As Reuben and Simeon will they be mine' means that they will be truth and the good of truth. 'And your offspring that you beget after them' means interior truths and forms of good which are begotten later on. 'Will be yours' means that they will be in the rational which is within the internal. 'They will be called by the name of their brothers in their inheritance' means that they will be of the same essential nature as that of the Church's truths and forms of good, and will exist together among them. 'And as for me, when I was coming from Paddan' means from a state of cognitions. 'Rachel died on me in the land of Canaan' means the end of a former affection for interior truth. 'On the road when there was still a stretch of land' means what comes in between. 'To go to Ephrath' means the spiritual of the celestial in a former state. 'And I buried her on the road to Ephrath' means a casting away of that state. 'That is, Bethlehem' means replacing this, a state in which there is a new affection for truth and good.

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2504. 'And he sojourned in Gerar' means consequent instruction in the spiritual things of faith. This is clear from the meaning of 'sojourning' as receiving instruction, dealt with in 1463, 2025, and from the meaning of 'Gerar' as the spiritual entity of faith. Gerar is mentioned in several places in Genesis, as in Chapter 10:19; 26:1, 6, 17, 20, 26, and in those places it means faith, the reason being that Gerar was in Philistia, and 'Philistia' means knowledge of the cognitions of faith, see 1197, 1198. Gerar was also the place where the king of the Philistines used to live. Consequently 'Gerar' means faith itself, 1209, and 'the king of Gerar' the truth itself of faith, for 'a king' in the internal sense is truth, 1672, 2015, 2069. Thus 'Abimelech' who is the subject in what follows means the doctrine of faith.

[2] In general there are intellectual things of faith, rational things of faith, and factual things of faith. In relation to one another they accordingly pass from more interior to more exterior. The inmost things of faith are called intellectual; those which pass down from them or from there are the rational things of faith; and those in turn which pass down from these are the factual things of faith. They are interrelated, to use the language of the learned, as prior to posterior, or what amounts to the same, as superior to inferior, that is, as more interior to more exterior. It does indeed seem to man as though the factual degree of faith is first and that the rational then arises from that, and after this the intellectual from that, for the reason that this is the way a human being develops from childhood onwards. But in fact the intellectual is constantly flowing; into the rational, and the rational into the factual, though man is not directly conscious of it. In childhood the influx is obscure; in adult years it is more noticeable; and when at length the individual has been regenerated it is quite manifest. Once he is regenerate this order is quite apparent, and still more fully so in the next life, see 1495. All of these things, distinguished as described into separate degrees and existing in relation to one another in the order shown, are called spiritual. The spiritual things of faith constitute all truths that stem from good, that is, from a celestial origin. Whatever derives from the celestial is one of the spiritual things of faith.