3182. 'They sent away Rebekah their sister' means separation from the affection for Divine truth. This is clear from the meaning of 'sending away' as being separated, and from the representation of 'Rebekah their sister' as the affection for Divine truth, dealt with above in 3077, 3179 - 'a sister' meaning truth, see 1495, 2508, 2524, 2556, 3160. What is implied here may be seen from what has been stated and shown above in this chapter; yet to make it even clearer let a further brief comment be made about it. When truth that is to be introduced and joined to good is raised up from the natural it is separated from things present in the natural. That separation is what is meant by 'they sent away Rebekah their sister'. The separation takes place when the person looks no longer from truth to good but from good to truth, or what amounts to the same, when he looks no longer from doctrine to life but from life to doctrine - as the following example shows: Doctrine teaches the truth that no one is to be hated, for anyone who hates another slays him every moment. In his earliest years a person scarcely recognizes this, but as he grows older, if he is being reformed he places it among those matters of doctrine which ought to be matters of life. At length he lives according to that truth, in which case he no longer thinks from doctrine but acts from life. When that happens this truth of doctrine is raised up from the natural, indeed it is separated from the natural, and is implanted within good in the rational. Once this has happened he no longer permits the natural man to voice any doubt about it by means of any captious argument existing there; indeed he does not allow the natural man to reason against it at all.

3161. 'Behold, Rebekah is before you; take her and go, and let her be your master's son's wife, as Jehovah has spoken' means consent inspired from the Lord. This too could be shown by an explanation of all the individual words, the general import of these in the internal sense being the meaning that has just been stated. The implications are as follows: When the Lord lived in the world He made the Human within Himself Divine by His own power, the human with everyone having its beginnings in the inmost part of the rational, 2106, 2194. This verse describes how He made it Divine, that is to say, already so as of good and of truth. The good there came from His essential Divinity, that is, from Jehovah the Father from whom He had been conceived; but the truth there had to be acquired by the ordinary way, as with every other human being.

[2] It is well known that nobody is born rational but merely into the ability to become so, and that he becomes rational by means of factual knowledge, that is to say, by means of cognitions which divide up into many genera and species, the first of which are the means leading on to those next to them, and so on in order to the last of all which are cognitions of the spiritual things of the Lord's kingdom and are called matters of doctrine. These latter cognitions are learned in part from the doctrine of faith, in part directly from the Word, and in part therefore by a person's own efforts, as is also well known. As long as these matters of doctrine remain solely in the memory they are merely factual truths and have not as yet been made over to the individual as his own. They first become made over to him when he starts to love them for the sake of life, and more so when he applies them to life. When this happens truths are raised up from the natural memory into the rational part of the mind and are there joined to good. And when they have been joined they are no longer matters of knowledge but of life, for in that case a person is no longer learning from truths how to live but actually living by them. In this way truths come to be his own and become matters of the will. He accordingly enters the heavenly marriage, for the heavenly marriage consists in good and truth joined together in the rational. With men these things are accomplished by the Lord.

[3] But in Himself the Lord did this by Himself, unaided. From the Divine itself He not only begot the Rational as regards Good, but also through this the Natural as regards Truth, which He joined to Good. For it is good that chooses truth for itself and also gives form to it, for good acknowledges nothing else as truth but that which is compatible with it. Thus Divine good that was the Lord's moulded Truth for itself. Nor did it acknowledge as Truth anything else than that which would be compatible with Divine Good, that is, which would be Divine of Itself. Thus He achieved every single thing by His own power. These are the things that are meant by 'acknowledgement that it was the Lord's alone' and by 'consent inspired from the Lord'.