The Bible

 

Genesis 35

Study

   

1 And God said to Jacob, Arise, go up to Bethel, and dwell there, and make there an altar unto the ùGod that appeared unto thee when thou fleddest from the face of Esau thy brother.

2 And Jacob said to his household, and to all that were with him, Put away the strange gods that are among you, and cleanse yourselves, and change your garments;

3 and we will arise, and go up to Bethel; and I will make there an altar to the ùGod that answered me in the day of my distress, and was with me in the way that I went.

4 And they gave to Jacob all the strange gods that were in their hand, and the rings that were in their ears, and Jacob hid them under the terebinth that [is] by Shechem.

5 And they journeyed; and the terror of God was upon the cities that were round about them, and they did not pursue after the sons of Jacob.

6 And Jacob came to Luz, which is in the land of Canaan, that is, Bethel, he and all the people that were with him.

7 And he built there an altar, and called the place El-beth-el; because there God had appeared to him when he fled from the face of his brother.

8 And Deborah, Rebecca's nurse, died; and she was buried beneath Bethel, under the oak; and the name of it was called Allon-bachuth.

9 And God appeared to Jacob again after he had come from Padan-Aram, and blessed him.

10 And God said to him, Thy name is Jacob: thy name shall not henceforth be called Jacob, but Israel shall be thy name. And he called his name Israel.

11 And God said to him, I am the Almighty ùGod: be fruitful and multiply; a nation and a company of nations shall be of thee; and kings shall come out of thy loins.

12 And the land that I gave Abraham and Isaac, to thee will I give it, and to thy seed after thee will I give the land.

13 And God went up from him in the place where he had talked with him.

14 And Jacob set up a pillar in the place where he had talked with him, a pillar of stone, and poured on it a drink-offering, and poured oil on it.

15 And Jacob called the name of the place where God had talked with him, Beth-el.

16 And they journeyed from Bethel. And there was yet a certain distance to come to Ephrath, when Rachel travailed in childbirth; and it went hard with her in her childbearing.

17 And it came to pass when it went hard with her in her childbearing, that the midwife said to her, Fear not; for this also is a son for thee.

18 And it came to pass as her soul was departing -- for she died -- that she called his name Benoni; but his father called him Benjamin.

19 And Rachel died, and was buried on the way to Ephrath, which [is] Bethlehem.

20 And Jacob erected a pillar upon her grave: that is the pillar of Rachel's grave to [this] day.

21 And Israel journeyed, and spread his tent on the other side of Migdal-Eder.

22 And it came to pass when Israel dwelt in that land, that Reuben went and lay with Bilhah, his father's concubine; and Israel heard of it. And the sons of Jacob were twelve.

23 The sons of Leah: Reuben -- Jacob's firstborn -- and Simeon, and Levi, and Judah, and Issachar, and Zebulun.

24 The sons of Rachel: Joseph and Benjamin.

25 And the sons of Bilhah, Rachel's maidservant: Dan and Naphtali.

26 And the sons of Zilpah, Leah's maidservant: Gad and Asher. These are the sons of Jacob that were born to him in Padan-Aram.

27 And Jacob came to Isaac his father to Mamre -- to Kirjath-Arba, which is Hebron; where Abraham had sojourned, and Isaac.

28 And the days of Isaac were a hundred and eighty years.

29 And Isaac expired and died, and was gathered to his peoples, old and full of days. And his sons Esau and Jacob buried him.

   

From Swedenborg's Works

 

Arcana Coelestia #4642

Study this Passage

  
/ 10837  
  

4642. He is Edom. That this signifies the Lord’s Divine Human in respect to the natural and the corporeal, is evident from the representations of Edom as being the Lord’s Divine Human in respect to natural good, to which are adjoined the doctrinal things of truth (see n. 3302, 3322, 4241), thus in respect to the natural and the corporeal. For doctrinal things are like a body to truth, or in a spiritual sense are the bodily things of natural truth. Hence it is that by Edom is represented the Lord’s Divine Human in respect to the natural and the corporeal. Doctrine is as it were the embodiment of truth, because doctrine is not in itself truth, but truth is in doctrine as the soul in its body.

[2] In what now follows the Lord’s Divine good natural is treated of, but its derivations are described by names for the reason stated above-that the derivations of this good transcend the understanding of everyone, even that of an angel. For the angels are finite, and what is finite does not comprehend what is infinite. Nevertheless when this chapter is read, the derivations contained in the names are represented to angels in a general way by the influx of Divine love from the Lord, and the influx by a celestial flame which affects them with Divine good.

[3] He who believes that the Word is not inspired as to its smallest jot, and he who believes that it is inspired in any other way than that each single series represents Divine things, and thence heavenly and spiritual things, and that each single word signifies these, must needs suppose that these names involve nothing more than the genealogies from Esau. But what are genealogies to the Word? And what is there Divine in them? (But that the names in the Word all signify real things may be seen above, n. 1224, 1264, 1876, 1888, 4442, and in every place where their signification is unfolded.)

  
/ 10837  
  

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