4069. 'Return to the land of your fathers' means that He had now to bring Himself closer to Divine good. This is clear from the meaning of 'the land of your fathers' as Divine good in this case because it has reference to the Lord, for 'the land', which is Canaan, means the Lord's kingdom, 1607, 3481, and in the highest sense the Lord's Divine Human since this Human flows in and makes His kingdom, 3038, 3705; and 'father' means good, 3703. And since the goods and truths by means of which the Lord was to make the Natural Divine had now been acquired - those goods and truths being represented by Jacob's stay with Laban and by the cattle he acquired there - 'returning to the land of your fathers' consequently means bringing Himself closer to Divine good.

3905. 'Rachel saw that she was not bearing Jacob [any children]' means that interior truth was not yet acknowledged. This is clear from the representation of 'Rachel' as the affection for interior truth, or as interior truth itself, dealt with in 3758, 3782, 3793, 3819; from the meaning of 'bearing' as acknowledging in action as well as in faith, dealt with below; and from the representation of 'Jacob' as the good of natural truth, dealt with in 3669, 3677, 3829, and in the whole of the previous chapter. The reason why 'bearing' means acknowledging in action as well as in faith is that births in the Word mean spiritual births, 1145, 1255, 3860, 3868. Spiritual birth is the acknowledgement of and faith in truth and good, in this verse acknowledgement in action as well as in faith, that is to say, an acknowledgement of the interior truth represented by 'Rachel'. Since something is not acknowledged in faith until a person is living according to it the phrase 'acknowledgement in action as well as in faith' is therefore used. Truths of faith which are not learned for the sake of putting them into action but solely for the sake of knowing them attach themselves to affections for evil and falsity, and as a consequence are not the truths of faith with the person who learns them but within him go against faith.