4075. And the God of my father hath been with me. That this signifies that all things which He had were from the Divine, is evident from the fact that the “God of His father,” when predicated of the Lord, is the Divine which He had; and that “hath been with me,” signifies that all things which He had were from the Divine. When the Lord made the human in Himself Divine, He too had around Him societies of spirits and angels, for He willed that all things should be done according to order; but He summoned to Himself such as might be of service, and changed them at His good pleasure; yet He did not take from them and apply to Himself anything of good and truth, but only from the Divine. In this manner He also reduced into order both heaven and hell, and this by successive steps, until He had fully glorified Himself. That the societies of spirits and angels were capable of being of use, and yet that He took nothing from them, may be illustrated by examples.

[2] The societies which are such as to believe that good is from themselves, and thereby to place merit in goods, were of service to Him by introducing Him into memory-knowledge concerning such good, and thence into wisdom concerning good that is devoid of self-merit, such as is that which is from the Divine. This knowledge and the derivative wisdom were not from those societies, but were obtained by their means. Take another example: the societies which believe themselves to be very wise, and yet reason about good and truth, and about everything as to whether it is so, are for the most part societies of the spiritual; and these societies were of service to Him by introducing Him into knowledge in regard to such persons, and how greatly they are relatively in shade, and that unless the Lord should have mercy on them they would perish; and also into knowledge of many more things from the Divine, which were not from these societies, but by means of them.

[3] Take as yet another example the societies which are in love to God, and believe that if they look to the Infinite, and worship a hidden God, they can be in love to Him; when yet they are not so, unless by some idea they make that Infinite finite, or present the hidden God as visible within themselves by finite intellectual ideas; for otherwise it would be a looking into thick darkness, and embracing with love that which is therein, whence there would arise many fanciful and undigested conceits, in accordance with each man’s ideas. Such societies were also of service to Him by introducing Him into a knowledge of the quality of their interiors, and also of the quality of their love, and likewise into pity that they too could not be saved unless the Lord’s human should become also Divine, for them to look upon. This wisdom was not from these societies, but by their means from the Divine. The case was the same with everything else. From this it is evident how the case stands with the matter now under consideration-that nothing was taken from the good signified by “Laban,” but that all things which the Lord had were from the Divine, that is, from Himself.