4470. 'Then we will take our daughter and go' means that there would be no joining together. This is clear from the meaning of 'a marriage' as the joining together of good and truth, dealt with above in 4466. 'Taking their daughter and going' therefore means not giving her in marriage, and so means that there would be no joining together. At this point Jacob's sons speak as Jacob their father, for they do not say 'we will take our sister' but 'our daughter'. The reason for this is evident from the internal sense, namely that it was a matter for the father either to refuse or accept, in accordance with the law set out in Exodus 22:16-17. But because the subject here is those descended from Jacob and their semblance of religion, it is his sons, by whom that kind of religion is represented, who answer here in place of their father Jacob himself could not do so because here he represents the Ancient Church, 4439.

4439. 'Jacob heard that he had defiled Dinah his daughter' means a wrongful joining together, that is to say, a wrongful joining to the affection for truth which the external Church represented here by 'Jacob' possessed. This is clear from the meaning of 'defiling' as a wrongful joining together, for by 'marriages' is meant a rightful joining together, 4434, and therefore by the defilement of them a wrongful one, concerning which see 4433; from the representation of 'Dinah' as the affection for all things of faith, also the Church arising from that affection, dealt with in 4427; and from the representation of 'Jacob', who at this point is the external Ancient Church. The reason why Jacob' at this point means the external Ancient Church is that such a Church was to have been established among his descendants, and would in fact have been. established if those descendants had received the interior truths which existed among the Ancients. Jacob's representation of that Church at this point is also evident from the train of thought in this chapter, for he had no part in his sons' plan to smite the city and kill Hamor and Shechem, a deed which was also the reason for his telling Simeon and Levi,

You have brought trouble on me, by making me stink to the inhabitant of the land. Verse 30; and in the prophetical utterance he made before his death,

Into their secret place let my soul not come; in their congregation let not my glory be united; for in their anger they killed a man, and in their pleasure they hamstrung an ox. Genesis 49:6.

And there are very many other places in the Word besides these in which 'Jacob' represents the external Ancient Church, 422, 4286. The reason why 'Jacob' represents that Church is that in the highest sense he represents the Lord's Divine Natural, to which the external Church corresponds. His sons however mean his descendants who annihilated truth known to the Ancients as this existed among themselves, and in so doing destroyed that which was to constitute the Church, so that only that which was the representative of it remained with them, 4281, 4288, 4289, 4303.