Sleeping in the Bible represents a state of spiritual obscurity, in which we are distanced from the Lord and are not aware of His love and His wisdom. The Lord put the people of the Most Ancient Church (Adam) into such a state of obscurity (sleep) because they wanted to live from themselves. And in a way, humanity has been asleep ever since, unaware that our thoughts, our feelings, our very life and love flow into us from the Lord, and are not our own.

But the Lord would let Adam carry on. He took a part of him that was least alive – meaning the least receptive of the Lord, since the Lord is life – and prepared to make a new person that would give Adam the life he wanted. The people of the Most Ancient Church would be cut off from direct communication with the Lord and with heaven, but would instead – through the nearly lifeless bit of humanity represented by the rib – be able to experience life as their own.

(References: Arcana Coelestia 147, 148-151)

2143. 'Jehovah appeared to him' means the Lord's perception. This becomes clear from the fact that historical events as described in the Word are representative, and nothing else, and the actual words used there serve to mean the things that occur in the internal sense. Featured at this point in the internal sense are the Lord and His perception; and that perception was represented by the event of Jehovah's appearing to Abraham. Every appearance, every utterance, and every deed recorded in the historical sections of the Word is in this manner representative. But what each represents becomes apparent only if attention is paid to historical descriptions solely as objects - as when objects of sight serve solely to give one an opportunity and the ability to think about more sublime things, as for example when people look at gardens and yet think solely of fruits and their uses, and also of the delight of life given by these, and think still more sublimely of the happiness of paradise, or heaven. When their thoughts are on those things they do, it is true, behold the particular objects in the gardens, yet with so little interest in them as mere objects that they pay no attention to them. It is similar with the historical descriptions in the Word. When people's thoughts are on the celestial and spiritual things contained in the internal sense, just as little attention is paid to the historical events described or to the words themselves used to describe them.