3022. Verses 3-4 And I will make you swear by Jehovah, the God of heaven and the God of the earth, that you do not take a wife for my son from the daughters of the Canaanites in whose midst I am dwelling, but that you go to my land and to the place of my nativity; and you shall take a wife for my son Isaac.

'And I will make you swear by Jehovah, the God of heaven and the God of the earth' means an utterly sacred binding to the Divine which existed in highest things and in the things derived from these. 'That you do not take a wife for my son from the daughters of the Canaanites' means that the Divine Rational should not be joined to any affection incompatible with truth. 'In whose midst I am dwelling' means incompatible things in the maternal human that surround. 'But go to my land and to the place of my nativity' means to the Divine celestial and spiritual things which the Lord acquired to Himself. 'And you shall take a wife for my son Isaac' means that from this came the affection for truth which was to be joined to the affection for good belonging to the Rational.

In a general sense, being "born" in the Bible represents one spiritual state producing another, usually some form of love or affection producing or "giving birth" to truth or to desires for good. This is not hard to see: If you love someone, that love naturally gives birth to ideas on how to be good to that person and make him or her happy. This is why sons and daughters in the Bible represent true ideas and desires for good. On a higher level, though, being born represents what the Writings call "regeneration," or the life-long process of putting off our natural thoughts and desires and embracing spiritual life from the Lord. This is what the Bible means when it talks about being "born again" – if we live our lives from the Lord, He will eventually take away our evil desires so that we can be "born" as angels in heaven, free of evil desires and dark thoughts. Of course, these two levels of meaning are really one: The Lord is love itself, and if we align with Him we become forms of love and truth ourselves, expressions of His love just as the desire to do something good might be the expression of your love for a friend.