4252. Verses 9-12. And Jacob said, O God of my father Abraham and God of my father Isaac, O Jehovah, who says to me, Return to your land, and to the place of your nativity, and I will deal well with you; I am not worthy of all the mercies and of all the truth which You have shown to Your servant, for with just my staff I passed over this Jordan, and now I have become two camps. Deliver me, I pray, from the hand of my brother, from the hand of Esau; for I fear him, lest he comes and smites me, the mother with the children. ¹ And You have said, I will certainly deal well with you and I will make your seed like the sand of the sea which cannot be counted for multitude.

'Jacob said, O God of my father Abraham and God of my father Isaac, O Jehovah' means the holiness of preparation and arrangement. 'Who says to me, Return to your land, and to the place of your nativity, and I will deal well with you' means to become joined to Divine Good and Truth. 'I am not worthy of all the mercies and of all the truth which You have shown to Your servant' means an expression, in that state, of humbleness before good and before truth. 'For with just my staff I passed over this Jordan, and now I have become two camps' means that from having little He now had much. 'Deliver me, I pray, from the hand of my brother, from the hand of Esau; for I fear him' means the state of truth in relation to good, in which truth has made itself first. 'Lest he comes and smites me, the mother with the children' means that it is about to perish. 'And You have said, I will certainly deal well with you' means that it would nevertheless obtain life then. 'And I will make your seed like the sand of the sea which cannot be counted for multitude' means the fruitfulness and multiplication then.

4252[a]. '[Jacob] said, O God of my father Abraham and God of my father Isaac, O Jehovah' means the holiness of preparation and arrange meet. This is clear from the meaning of 'the God of my father Abraham' as the Lord's Divine itself, dealt with in 3439, and from the meaning of 'the God of my father Isaac' as His Divine Human, dealt with in 3704, 4180. And because each of these is 'Jehovah', the words used are 'O God of my father Abraham and God of my father Isaac, O Jehovah'. Here however the holiness is meant which proceeds from the Divine, for all holiness begins there. The reason why holiness is meant is that all this was within the natural, represented by 'Jacob', and good, represented by 'Esau', had not yet been joined in the natural to truth. For the subject now is the state when good is received, at this point the state of preparation and arrangement to receive it. Jacob's prayer does not embody anything else, and therefore the words he used mean the holiness of preparation and arrangement.

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