3283. 'The daughter of Bethuel the Aramean from Paddan Aram, the sister of Laban the Aramean, to be his wife' means its essential nature and its state. This is clear from the representation of 'Bethuel' and 'Laban', and also from the meaning of 'Aram' and 'Paddan Aram', as the original elements from which Divine Truth represented by Rebekah derived its essential nature and its state. But what Bethuel and Laban each represents, and what Aram or Syria means, has been explained in the previous chapter. The reason why they are mentioned again here is that in what follows below the Lord's Natural is the subject.

[2] The Lord's Natural could not be made Divine until truth had been allied to His Rational and that truth had been made Divine - for the influx into the Natural had to be an influx from the Divine Good of the Rational by way of Divine Truth there. Indeed the entire life of the natural man so far as knowing and acting with understanding are concerned is due to such an influx. It is the rational in fact that coordinates everything in the natural, and in accordance with that coordination fittingly regards the things that are there. Indeed the rational is like a higher faculty of seeing which, when it looks at facts belonging to the natural man, is like someone looking down on to a plain below him. The light of that faculty of seeing is the light of truth, but the origin of that light rests with the good present in the rational. But more of this in what follows below.

Food in the Bible represents the desire for good, and water and other drinks represent the understanding and true ideas we need to recognize what good is and how to bring it into being – or simple "truth," as Swedenborg puts it. When people (or animals) in the Bible drink, then, it represents learning true things and internalizing them so they can be used. In the contrary sense it can mean taking in false ideas instead, and allowing them to pollute the mind. When a person drinks clean water, it represents getting simple, external ideas from the Bible. Drinking good wine represents learning the deeper spiritual ideas that lie within the stories of the Bible. This is why Jesus said to the Samaritan woman that the water He gave would be a "well springing up to everlasting life" (John 4:14). The details of the instruction can also vary depending on who or what is drinking. When Rebekah gives water to the camels of Abraham's servant (Genesis 24) this means instruction about known facts from the Bible to the external part of the mind. When Jacob waters Laban's flock of sheep (Genesis 29), this means instruction from doctrine about loving what is good.