4112. 'And Jacob stole the heart of Laban the Aramean' means a change, as regards good, of the state meant by 'Laban'. This is clear from the meaning of 'stealing' as taking away that which is cherished and holy, and so changing the state, dealt with immediately above in 4111; from the meaning of 'the heart' as that which proceeds from the will, and - when the will desires good - as good, dealt with in 2930, 3313, 3888, 3889; and from the representation of 'Laban' as intermediate good which is now being separated. And because it is being separated Laban is now called the Aramean, as also in verse 24 below, for 'Laban the Aramean' means, as previously, a kind of good which does not have any Divine Good and Truth within it. The reason why this is meant is that Aram or Syria was separated from the land of Canaan by the river, namely the Euphrates, and so lay outside the land of Canaan which in the internal sense means the Lord's kingdom and in the highest sense the Lord's Divine Human, see above in 4108.

[2] Specifically 'Aram' or Syria means cognitions of truth and good, see 1232, 1234, 3051, 3249, 3664, 3680. The reason why it has this meaning is that the Ancient Church existed there also, with remnants of it remaining there for a long time, as is evident from Balaam who came from there and who was acquainted with Jehovah and also prophesied concerning the Lord. But after the growth of idolatry in that country, and after Abram had been summoned from it and the representative Church was established in the land of Canaan, 'Aram' or Syria took on the representation of a region outside the Church, that is, of a region separated from the Church and as a consequence remote from the things that constituted the Lord's kingdom. But it continued to mean cognitions of good and truth. The reason why Jacob is said to have 'stolen Laban's heart' by not giving any indication that he was fleeing is that immediately above a change of state as regards truth was spoken of, and therefore a change of state as regards good is spoken of here. For when truth is dealt with in the Word so also is good, on account of the heavenly marriage, which is the marriage of truth and good, present in every individual part of the Word, 683, 793, 801, 2516, 2712.

3889. To enable me to know not only that there is a correspondence of celestial things, which are those of love, with the motions of the heart, and of spiritual things, which are those of faith derived from love, with the motions of the lungs, but also the nature of this correspondence, I was allowed to spend a significant amount of time with angels who were to demonstrate this to me visually. By means of wonderful circular movements, impossible to describe, they formed a resemblance of the heart and a resemblance of the lungs, including all the intricate interior and exterior parts which the heart and lungs possess. They traced the spontaneous flow of heaven, for heaven strives to exhibit that form from the influx into itself of love from the Lord. In this manner each individual part of the heart was exhibited, and after that the union of the heart and the lungs, which union they also represented by means of the marriage of good and truth. From this also it was evident that the heart corresponds to the celestial element of good and the lungs to the spiritual element of truth, and that the material form in which the two exist joined together is the heart and lungs. I was also told that the same applies throughout the whole body, that is, to things of the heart and those of the lungs within all the individual members, organs, and viscera of the body. For where the two are not acting together but each one by turns separately, no motion of life belonging in any way in the will can exist there nor any feeling of life beginning in any way in the understanding there.