5999. Verses 2-4 And God spoke to Israel in visions of the night and said, Jacob, Jacob. And he said, Behold, here I am. And He said, I am God, the God of your father; do not be afraid of going down to Egypt, for I will make you into a great nation there. I will go down with you to Egypt, and I will certainly cause you to come up also; and Joseph will put his hand on your eyes.

'And God spoke to Israel in visions of the night' means obscure revelation. 'And said, Jacob, Jacob' means made to natural truth. 'And he said, Behold, here I am' means discernment. 'And He said, I am God, the God of your father' means the Divine Intellectual, the source of what flowed in. 'Do not be afraid of going down to Egypt' means that natural truth and all that accompanies it must be introduced into the facts known to the Church. 'For I will make you into a great nation' means that truths will be made into good. 'I will go down with you to Egypt' means the Lord's presence in that state. 'And I will certainly cause you to come up also' means a raising up after that. 'And Joseph will put his hand on your eyes' means that the internal celestial will impart life to it.

1893. That 'Sarai, Abram's wife, bore him no child' means that the Rational Man did not as yet exist will be clear from what is said later on, when Isaac is the subject, for everyone, as has been stated, has an internal man, a rational man which is in between, and an external man, which strictly speaking is the natural man. These, as they existed with the Lord, were represented by Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob - the Internal Man by Abraham, the Rational Man by Isaac, and the Natural Man by Jacob. The Lord's Internal Man was Jehovah Himself, for He was conceived from Jehovah. This was why so many times He referred to Jehovah as His Father, and why in the Word the Lord is called 'the only begotten of God' and 'God's only Son'. The rational man does not exist with anyone when he is first born, only a potentiality to become rational, as may become clear to anyone from the fact that new-born babes do not possess reason but become rational as time goes by through the response of the senses to stimuli from without and from within, as knowledge and cognitions are bestowed on them. Rationality does, it is true, appear to exist with children; but rationality does not in fact do so, only something of the first beginnings of it, as may be recognized from the fact that reason resides with people who are adult and advanced in years.

[2] The Lord's Rational Man is the subject in the present chapter. The Divine Rational itself is represented by Isaac, but the first rational before it had become Divine is represented by Ishmael. Here therefore the statement that 'Sarai, Abram's wife, bore him no child' means that the Divine Rational did not as yet exist. As stated already, the Lord was born in the same way as any other, and as regards what He derived from Mary His mother He was like any other. And because the rational is formed through facts and cognitions which enter in by way of the external senses, or the senses that belong to the external man, His first rational was therefore born as it is with any other. But since everything human in Him was made Divine by His own power, so was the rational made Divine. His first rational is described in the present chapter, and once more in Chapter 21, where again in verses 9-21 Hagar and Ishmael are the subject, where it is said that Ishmael was cast out when Isaac, who represents the Divine Rational, had grown up.