3666. Verses 3-5. And God Shaddai will bless thee, and will make thee fruitful and multiply thee, and thou shalt be a company of peoples. And He will give thee the blessing of Abraham, to thee and to thy seed with thee, to cause thee to inherit the land of thy sojournings, which God gave unto Abraham. And Isaac sent away Jacob; and he went to Paddan-aram, to Laban the son of Bethuel the Aramean, the brother of Rebekah, the mother of Jacob and Esau. “And God Shaddai will bless thee,” signifies the temptations of that truth and good through which there is conjunction; “and will make thee fruitful and multiply thee,” signifies the derivative goods and truths; “and thou shalt be a company of peoples,” signifies abundance; “and He will give thee the blessing of Abraham,” signifies the conjunction of the Divine Itself with the good and truth of the natural; “to thee and to thy seed with thee,” signifies with the good and its derivative truth; “to cause thee to inherit the land of thy sojournings,” signifies the life of instructions; which God gave unto Abraham,” signifies which is from the Divine; “and Isaac sent away Jacob,” signifies the beginning of manifestation; “and he went to Paddan-aram,” signifies here as before the knowledges of that truth; “to Laban the son of Bethuel the Aramean,” signifies collateral good; “the brother of Rebekah, the mother of Jacob and Esau,” signifies the affinity from the mother, with the good of truth which is “Jacob,” and with the truth of good which is “Esau.”

2508. She is my sister. That this signifies rational truth, is evident from the signification of a “sister,” as being rational intellectual truth (see n. 1495). That rational truth is a “sister,” can be seen only from the heavenly marriage; for the things which descend from this have kinships among themselves like the relationships and connections on earth (concerning which see n. 685, 917); and this with indefinite variety. The heavenly marriage itself exists solely between the Divine good and the Divine truth. From this there are conceived in man the intellectual, the rational, and the faculty of knowing; for without conception from the heavenly marriage man cannot possibly be imbued with understanding, with reason, or with knowledge, and consequently cannot be man. In proportion therefore as he receives from the heavenly marriage, in the same proportion is he man. The heavenly marriage is in the Lord Himself, thus the Lord is this marriage itself, for He is the Divine good itself and at the same time the Divine truth. Angels and men are in the heavenly marriage insofar as they are in love to the Lord and in charity toward the neighbor, and insofar as they are thence in faith; that is, insofar as they are in the Lord’s good, and thence in truth; and they are then called “daughters and sons,” and in their relation to one another “sisters and brothers;” but this with differences. The reason why rational truth is called a “sister” is that it is conceived from the influx of the Divine good into the affection of rational truths; the good which is thence in the rational is called a “brother,” and the truth which is thence, a “sister.” But this will be better seen from what is said by Abraham in verse 12 of this chapter: “and moreover truly she is my sister; she is the daughter of my father, but not the daughter of my mother; and she became my wife.”