20. Verse 3 And God said, Let there be light; and there was light. This is at the outset when a person starts to realize that good and truth are something superior. Thoroughly external people do not even know what good is and what truth is, for they imagine that everything which comprises self-love and love of the world is good, and that everything that panders to those loves is truth. Thus they do not know that the things which they imagine to be good are in fact evil, and that those which they imagine to be true are in fact false. But when a person is conceived anew, first he starts to recognize that the good in him is not really good, and then, when he enters more into light, to recognize the existence of the Lord and that the Lord is good and truth themselves. The Lord Himself says in John that men ought to know He exists,

Unless you believe that I am, you will die in your sins. John 8:24.

The point that the Lord is good itself, which is life, and truth itself, which is light, together with the consequent point that no good or truth exist except from the Lord, is made once more in John,

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. All things were made through Him, and without Him was not anything made that was made. In Him was life, and the life was the light of men, and the light shines in the darkness. He was the true light that enlightens every man coming into the world John 1:1, 3-5, 9.

3194. 'Isaac had come from Beer Lahai Roi' means Divine Rational Good born from Divine Truth itself. This is clear from the representation of 'Isaac' as the Lord's Divine Rational, dealt with in 2083, 2630, here as regards Divine Good there since Divine truth, represented by Rebekah, had not yet been summoned out of the natural and joined to it - that joining together being the subject in what follows now; and from the meaning of 'coming from Beer Lahai Roi' as born from Divine Truth. In the original language Beer Lahai Roi means The spring of the Living One who sees me, as above in Genesis 16:13-14, where one reads,

Hagar called the name of Jehovah who spoke to her, You are a God who sees me; for she said, Have I not also here seen after Him who sees me? Therefore she called the spring, Beer Lahai Roi (The spring of the Living One who sees me).

For the meaning of these two verses, see 1952-1958, where also it is evident that 'a spring' means Divine Truth, and that 'the Living One who sees me' means Divine Rational Good, which is there called the Lord's Interior man, springing from Divine Truth. The substance of this very deep arcanum is that Good and Truth belong essentially to the Divine itself; but the Lord's Divine Human came into existence from Divine Good, and was born from Divine Truth. Or what amounts to the same, the Lord's Essential Being (Esse) was Divine Good, and the Manifestation (Existere) of Him was Divine Truth. This was the origin of the Lord's Divine Rational Good to which He joined Divine Truth from the Human.