4431. 'The son of Hamor the Hivite' means received from the Ancients. This is clear from the meaning of 'the son', who in this case is Shechem, as interior truth, dealt with immediately above - for 'a son' means truth, see 489, 491, 533, 1147, 2623, 3373, 4257; and from the representation of 'Hamor' as the father of that truth, and so truth received from the Ancients. Indeed the truth which was present interiorly within religious observances and within representatives emanated from the Church of old. This being so, Hamor was also named 'the Hivite', for the Hivites were a nation which meant that kind of truth among the Ancients, because that kind of it had existed with them since ancient times. This is the reason why at this point Hamor is called 'the Hivite'.

[2] Actually every nation in the land of Canaan had in ancient times meant some good or else truth of the Church, for the Most Ancient Church, which was celestial, had existed there, 4116. But subsequently the nations there, like every other with whom the Church existed, turned aside into idolatrous practices, and therefore these same nations also mean forms of idolatry. But because the Hivites since ancient times meant interior truth, and because they were one of the more upright nations among whom iniquity had not become so complete, that is, the truth of the Church had not been completely annihilated, as it had among others, the Lord in His Providence therefore preserved the Hivite Gibeonites by means of the covenant which Joshua and the princes made with them, Joshua 9:15. For those Gibeonites were Hivites, see Joshua 9:7; 11:19. From all this one may now see how 'Shechem the son of Hamor the Hivite' comes to mean interior truth received from the Ancients.

2016. To say that the Lord is the source of all good, and from this of all truth, is to express an unchanging truth. Angels see this truth with perception, so clearly that they perceive that insofar as anything is derived from the Lord it is good and true, and insofar as anything is derived from themselves it is evil and false. They also confess this truth before souls newly arrived there, and before spirits who are in doubt about it; indeed, they go so far as to declare that they are withheld by the Lord from evil and falsity which arise from their proprium and are kept by Him in good and truth. The actual withholding from their evil and falsity and the actual entrance of the Lord with good and truth is also perceptible to them; see 1614. But as to man's imagining that he does what is good from himself and thinks what is true from himself, this is an appearance due to his state being a state in which no perception is present and in which very great obscurity exists where influx is concerned. What he thinks therefore is based on that appearance, indeed on a delusion, from which he never allows himself to be removed so long as he believes nothing but the senses and reasons from these whether the thing is so. But although the appearance is such, man ought nevertheless to do what is good and to think what is true as from himself, for in no other way can he be reformed and regenerated. For the reason why, see 1937, 1947.

[2] The subject in this verse is the Lord's Human Essence that was to be united to the Divine Essence, also that all good and truth would accordingly come to man from the Divine Essence by way of His Human Essence. This is a Divine arcanum which few believe because they cannot grasp it mentally. Indeed they imagine that Divine Good can reach out to man independently of the Lord's Human united to the Divine. But the reason it cannot do so has already been shown briefly in 1676, 1990 - that through the evil desires in which he had immersed himself and through the falsities with which he had blinded himself man had moved himself so far away from the Supreme Divine that no influx of the Divine into the rational part of his mind was possible, except by way of the Human which the Lord united in Himself to the Divine. It was through His Human that communication was established, for in that way the Supreme Divine was able to come to man, as the Lord explicitly states in many places, that is to say, where He says that He is the way and that there is no other access to the Father except through Him. This then is what is being stated here - that He, that is to say, the Human united to the Divine, is the source of all good and of all truth.