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Genesis 28

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1 Then Isaac sent for Jacob, and blessing him, said, Do not take a wife from among the women of Canaan;

2 But go to Paddan-aram, to the house of Bethuel, your mother's father, and there get yourself a wife from the daughters of Laban, your mother's brother.

3 And may God, the Ruler of all, give you his blessing, giving you fruit and increase, so that you may become an army of peoples.

4 And may God give you the blessing of Abraham, to you and to your seed, so that the land of your wanderings, which God gave to Abraham, may be your heritage.

5 So Isaac sent Jacob away: and he went to Paddan-aram, to Laban, son of Bethuel the Aramaean, the brother of Rebekah, the mother of Jacob and Esau.

6 So when Esau saw that Isaac had given Jacob his blessing, and sent him away to Paddan-aram to get a wife for himself there, blessing him and saying to him, Do not take a wife from among the women of Canaan;

7 And that Jacob had done as his father and mother said and had gone to Paddan-aram;

8 It was clear to Esau that his father had no love for the women of Canaan,

9 So Esau went to Ishmael and took Mahalath, the daughter of Abraham's son Ishmael, the sister of Nebaioth, to be his wife in addition to the wives he had.

10 So Jacob went out from Beer-sheba to go to Haran.

11 And coming to a certain place, he made it his resting-place for the night, for the sun had gone down; and he took one of the stones which were there, and putting it under his head he went to sleep in that place.

12 And he had a dream, and in his dream he saw steps stretching from earth to heaven, and the angels of God were going up and down on them.

13 And he saw the Lord by his side, saying, I am the Lord, the God of Abraham your father, and the God of Isaac: I will give to you and to your seed this land on which you are sleeping.

14 Your seed will be like the dust of the earth, covering all the land to the west and to the east, to the north and to the south: you and your seed will be a name of blessing to all the families of the earth.

15 And truly, I will be with you, and will keep you wherever you go, guiding you back again to this land; and I will not give you up till I have done what I have said to you.

16 And Jacob, awaking from his sleep, said, Truly, the Lord is in this place and I was not conscious of it.

17 And fear came on him, and he said, This is a holy place; this is nothing less than the house of God and the doorway of heaven.

18 And early in the morning Jacob took the stone which had been under his head, and put it up as a pillar and put oil on it.

19 And he gave that place the name of Beth-el, but before that time the town was named Luz.

20 Then Jacob took an oath, and said, If God will be with me, and keep me safe on my journey, and give me food and clothing to put on,

21 So that I come again to my father's house in peace, then I will take the Lord to be my God,

22 And this stone which I have put up for a pillar will be God's house: and of all you give me, I will give a tenth part to you.

   

From Swedenborg's Works

 

Arcana Coelestia #4290

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4290. In the internal historical sense 'he said, I will not let you go unless you bless me' means that they insisted on being representative, for being insistent is meant by 'I will not let you' and the representative of the Church by 'being blessed'. This particular matter - the insistence of Jacob's descendants that they should be representative of the Church, though they were no more the elect than any other nation - is not very clear, it is true, from the historical narratives of the Word contained in the sense of the letter. It is not clear because those narratives hold the arcana of heaven within them, which accordingly follow one another in a connected sequence, and also because the actual names there are used to mean spiritual realities, many of which names indeed are used in the highest sense to mean the Lord. Examples of these are Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, who mean in the highest sense the Lord, as has been shown many times in what has gone before; see also 1965, 1989, 2011, 3245, 3305 (end), 3439.

[2] The fact that Jacob's descendants were not the elect, yet they insisted that the Church should have its existence among themselves, may be seen from the internal historical sense in many places in the Word, openly so in the following statements in Moses,

Jehovah said to Moses, Go up from here, you and the people which you made to go up out of the land of Egypt, into the land which I swore to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, saying, To your seed I will give it. I will not go up in your midst, for you are a stiff-necked people, lest I consume you on the way. When the people heard this bad news, 1 they mourned and took off every one his ornament from upon him. And Moses took a tent and pitched it for himself outside the camp, far away from the camp. Moses said to Jehovah, See, You say to me, Make this people go up, when You have not made known to me whom You will send with me. Now therefore, if, I pray, I have found favour in Your eyes, make known to me, I pray, Your ways, so that I may know of You, that I have found favour in Your eyes. See also that this nation is Your people. He said therefore, My presence will go [with you], until I give you rest. Exodus 33:1, 3-4, 7, 12-14.

In this chapter of Exodus it is said that Moses made the people go up out of Egypt and then that they took off their ornaments and mourned, and that Moses pitched the tent outside the camp and that Jehovah gave His assent. This shows plainly that they themselves were insistent.

[3] In the same author,

Jehovah said to Moses, How long will this people provoke Me? And how long will they not believe, for all the signs which I have performed in their midst? I will strike them down with pestilence and annihilate them, and I will make you into a nation greater and mightier than they are. But Moses entreated Jehovah, who being appeased said, I will be gracious according to your word. But yet, I am the living One, and all the earth will be filled with the glory of Jehovah; for as for all the men who have seen My glory and My signs which I performed in Egypt and in the desert, and despite this have tempted Me these ten times and have not obeyed My voice, they will not see the land which I swore to their fathers; all who provoke Me will not see it. In this desert will your bodies fall, but I will bring in your children. Numbers 14[11-13, 20-23, 29, 31].

From these verses also it is evident that Jehovah was willing to annihilate them and therefore not to establish the Church among them, but that they insisted it should be established among them, and therefore it was done. And there were many other occasions besides this when Jehovah would have wiped out that repeatedly rebellious nation but repeatedly He allowed Himself to be appeased by their entreaties.

[4] The same is also implied by the fact that Balaam was not allowed to curse that people, in 22 Chapters, 24 of Numbers; in addition to other places where it is said that Jehovah repented of having brought that people in; also that Jehovah was appeased, as well as that He repeatedly made a new covenant with them. These are the kinds of things that are meant in the internal historical sense by the words 'I will not let you go unless you bless me'. Something similar is also meant by Jacob's taking the birthright from Esau as well as taking the blessing by deceit from him, in Chapters 25, 27 of Genesis.

Footnotes:

1. literally, evil word

  
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Thanks to the Swedenborg Society for the permission to use this translation.