3160. And Laban and Bethuel answered and said, The word hath gone forth from Jehovah; we cannot speak unto thee evil or good. That this signifies acknowledgment that it was of the Lord alone, may be seen from the explication of the several words as to the internal sense; but that this is the conclusion from them, is evident without such explication. That “the word hath gone forth from Jehovah,” signifies from the Lord, is evident; for by “Jehovah,” so often named in the Old Testament, no other is ever meant than the Lord (see n. 1343, 1736, 1815, 2156, 2329, 2921, 3023, 3035). That these things involve arcana, is evident from the fact that here Laban made answer, who was a brother, and then Bethuel who was the father; but not the father and mother; and that the virgin did not answer till afterwards. The reason of this is that by Laban as a brother is represented the affection of good in the natural man (see n. 3129, 3130); and by Bethuel, the origin of the affection of good. The affection of good and the affection of truth in the natural man are as brother and sister; and the affection of truth called forth from the natural man into the rational and there conjoined with good, is as a married woman.

[2] The secret reason why Laban and Bethuel answered, that is, the brother first and then the father, is that while good from the rational man is flowing into the natural, it does not flow immediately into the truth there, but into the good there, and through the good into the truth; and unless there is this influx the affection of truth cannot come into actual being. The affection of good in the natural man is that which acknowledges, and thus is that which first consents; for there is an immediate communication between rational good and natural good, but not between rational good and natural truth (concerning the parallelism of these see above, n. 1831, 1832). Two ancient formulas of speech are found here, namely, “The word hath gone forth from Jehovah,” meaning that it was done of Jehovah; and “We cannot speak unto thee evil or good,” meaning that they neither dared to deny nor to affirm. Concerning the acknowledgment that it was of the Lord alone, see what now follows.

1815. He said unto him, I am Jehovah. That this signifies the Lord’s internal man, which is Jehovah, and from which He had perception, is evident from what has been already said, namely, that the Lord’s Internal, that is, whatever the Lord received from the Father, was Jehovah in Him, for He was conceived from Jehovah. What a man receives from his father is one thing, and what he receives from his mother is another. From his father a man receives all that is internal, his soul itself or life being from the father; but he receives from his mother all that is external. In a word, the interior man, or spirit itself, is from the father; but the outer man, or body itself, is from the mother; which everyone can comprehend merely from the fact that the soul itself is implanted by the father, and this begins to clothe itself in a little bodily form in the ovum. Whatever is afterwards added, whether in the ovum or in the womb, is of the mother, for it has no increase from anywhere else.

[2] It may be seen from this that as to His internals the Lord was Jehovah. But because the external, which the Lord received from the mother, was to be united to the Divine or Jehovah, and this through temptations and victories, as before said, it could not appear otherwise to Him in those states, than that when He spoke with Jehovah it was as it were with another; when yet He spoke with Himself, that is, so far as He was in a state of conjunction. The Lord’s perception, which He had in the highest perfection above all who have been born, was from His Internal, that is, from Jehovah Himself, which is here signified in the internal sense by the words, “Jehovah said unto him.”