3161. 'Behold, Rebekah is before you; take her and go, and let her be your master's son's wife, as Jehovah has spoken' means consent inspired from the Lord. This too could be shown by an explanation of all the individual words, the general import of these in the internal sense being the meaning that has just been stated. The implications are as follows: When the Lord lived in the world He made the Human within Himself Divine by His own power, the human with everyone having its beginnings in the inmost part of the rational, 2106, 2194. This verse describes how He made it Divine, that is to say, already so as of good and of truth. The good there came from His essential Divinity, that is, from Jehovah the Father from whom He had been conceived; but the truth there had to be acquired by the ordinary way, as with every other human being.

[2] It is well known that nobody is born rational but merely into the ability to become so, and that he becomes rational by means of factual knowledge, that is to say, by means of cognitions which divide up into many genera and species, the first of which are the means leading on to those next to them, and so on in order to the last of all which are cognitions of the spiritual things of the Lord's kingdom and are called matters of doctrine. These latter cognitions are learned in part from the doctrine of faith, in part directly from the Word, and in part therefore by a person's own efforts, as is also well known. As long as these matters of doctrine remain solely in the memory they are merely factual truths and have not as yet been made over to the individual as his own. They first become made over to him when he starts to love them for the sake of life, and more so when he applies them to life. When this happens truths are raised up from the natural memory into the rational part of the mind and are there joined to good. And when they have been joined they are no longer matters of knowledge but of life, for in that case a person is no longer learning from truths how to live but actually living by them. In this way truths come to be his own and become matters of the will. He accordingly enters the heavenly marriage, for the heavenly marriage consists in good and truth joined together in the rational. With men these things are accomplished by the Lord.

[3] But in Himself the Lord did this by Himself, unaided. From the Divine itself He not only begot the Rational as regards Good, but also through this the Natural as regards Truth, which He joined to Good. For it is good that chooses truth for itself and also gives form to it, for good acknowledges nothing else as truth but that which is compatible with it. Thus Divine good that was the Lord's moulded Truth for itself. Nor did it acknowledge as Truth anything else than that which would be compatible with Divine Good, that is, which would be Divine of Itself. Thus He achieved every single thing by His own power. These are the things that are meant by 'acknowledgement that it was the Lord's alone' and by 'consent inspired from the Lord'.

3849. 'And Laban gave to Rachel his daughter, Bilhah his servant-girl - to her to be a servant-girl' means exterior affections which are subservient bonds or means. This is clear from what has been stated above in 3835. The reason 'Bilhah the servant-girl' means exterior affections, and 'Zilpah, Leah's servant-girl' external affections, is that 'Rachel' represents the affection for internal truth and 'Leah' the affection for external truth. Exterior affections are natural affections subservient to internal. The reason these exterior affections are means that serve in the joining of truth to good is that no matter of doctrine, nor indeed any item of knowledge, can enter anyone except by means of affections. For affections hold life within themselves, but truths which belong to doctrine and knowledge do not without those affections hold it within themselves. The truth of this is quite evident, for without affection no one can even think, or indeed utter a single word. Anyone who gives this matter any consideration will perceive that a voice devoid of affection is the voice of an automaton and so simply a sound with no life to it; but that when it does have affections present in it the amount and the nature of that affection determines the amount and the nature of the life present in it. This shows what truths are without good, and that the affection present in truths springs from good.

[2] Anyone who gives the matter any consideration may also be aware of the same point from the fact that the human understanding is no understanding unless the will is present in it, for the life of the understanding is received from the will. This consideration too shows what truths are without good, namely that they are not truths at all, and that good is the source from which they draw their life; for truths belong to the understanding part of the mind and good to the will part. From this anyone is able to judge for himself what faith, which essentially is truth, is when devoid of charity, which essentially is good, and to judge that the truths of faith when devoid of the good of charity are dead, for as has been stated, the amount of affection present in truths, and the nature of it, determine the amount and nature of the life present there. But what give truths the appearance of still possessing life even when the good of charity is absent are the affections that go with self-love and love of the world, which possess no other life than that which in the spiritual sense is called death and is the life of hell. The word affection is used, and by that is meant that which is an extension from some love.

[3] From these considerations it may now be seen that affections are meant that serve in the joining of truth and good, and that affections are the means by which truths are introduced and also by which these are arranged into order. Genuine affections which go with love to the Lord and charity towards the neighbour bring them into a heavenly order, but evil affections which go with self-love and love of the world bring them into a hellish order, that is, into that which is the contrary of heavenly order.

[4] The most external affections of all are those which belong to the body and are called appetites and desires. Those immediately interior to these belong to the lower mind (animus) and are called natural affections. But internal affections belong to the rational mind find are called spiritual affections. To the latter, that is to say, to spiritual affections which belong to the higher mind (mens), truths expressed in matters of doctrine are introduced by means of the more external and the most external affections, that is, by natural and bodily ones. These are consequently subservient means and are meant by the servant-girls given by Laban to Rachel and to Leah. When they are called Laban's servant-girls the meaning is that those affections had their origin in the good represented by Laban, a good dealt with already. For the truths that are learned first cannot at first be instilled by means of any other affections. Genuine affections arrive in the process of time, but not until a person is acting from good.