The Bible

 

Genesis 28

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1 Isaac called Jacob, blessed him, and commanded him, "You shall not take a wife of the daughters of Canaan.

2 Arise, go to Paddan Aram, to the house of Bethuel your mother's father. Take a wife from there from the daughters of Laban, your mother's brother.

3 May God Almighty bless you, and make you fruitful, and multiply you, that you may be a company of peoples,

4 and give you the blessing of Abraham, to you, and to your seed with you, that you may inherit the land where you travel, which God gave to Abraham."

5 Isaac sent Jacob away. He went to Paddan Aram to Laban, son of Bethuel the Syrian, Rebekah's brother, Jacob's and Esau's mother.

6 Now Esau saw that Isaac had blessed Jacob and sent him away to Paddan Aram, to take him a wife from there, and that as he blessed him he gave him a command, saying, "You shall not take a wife of the daughters of Canaan,"

7 and that Jacob obeyed his father and his mother, and was gone to Paddan Aram.

8 Esau saw that the daughters of Canaan didn't please Isaac, his father.

9 Esau went to Ishmael, and took, besides the wives that he had, Mahalath the daughter of Ishmael, Abraham's son, the sister of Nebaioth, to be his wife.

10 Jacob went out from Beersheba, and went toward Haran.

11 He came to a certain place, and stayed there all night, because the sun had set. He took one of the stones of the place, and put it under his head, and lay down in that place to sleep.

12 He dreamed. Behold, a stairway set upon the earth, and its top reached to heaven. Behold, the angels of God ascending and descending on it.

13 Behold, Yahweh stood above it, and said, "I am Yahweh, the God of Abraham your father, and the God of Isaac. The land whereon you lie, to you will I give it, and to your seed.

14 Your seed will be as the dust of the earth, and you will spread abroad to the west, and to the east, and to the north, and to the south. In you and in your seed will all the families of the earth be blessed.

15 Behold, I am with you, and will keep you, wherever you go, and will bring you again into this land. For I will not leave you, until I have done that which I have spoken of to you."

16 Jacob awakened out of his sleep, and he said, "Surely Yahweh is in this place, and I didn't know it."

17 He was afraid, and said, "How dreadful is this place! This is none other than God's house, and this is the gate of heaven."

18 Jacob rose up early in the morning, and took the stone that he had put under his head, and set it up for a pillar, and poured oil on its top.

19 He called the name of that place Bethel, but the name of the city was Luz at the first.

20 Jacob vowed a vow, saying, "If God will be with me, and will keep me in this way that I go, and will give me bread to eat, and clothing to put on,

21 so that I come again to my father's house in peace, and Yahweh will be my God,

22 then this stone, which I have set up for a pillar, will be God's house. Of all that you will give me I will surely give the tenth to you."

   

From Swedenborg's Works

 

Arcana Coelestia #3737

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3737. 'Then Jehovah will be my God' means that the Divine Natural also is Jehovah. This becomes clear from the train of thought in the highest internal sense in which the subject is the Lord's Human when united to His Divine. But in order to see this sense thought must be detached from the historical events concerning Jacob and fixed on the Lord's Divine Human, in this case on His Divine Natural, which 'Jacob' represents. The human itself, as stated several times already, consists of the rational, which is the same as the internal man, and of the natural, which is the same as the external man, as well as of the body, which serves the natural as the means or outermost organ for living in the world, and through the natural serves the rational, and so on through the rational serves the Divine. Now because the Lord came into the world to make the entire Human within Him Divine, doing so according to Divine order; and because 'Jacob' represents the Lord's Natural and his life as a sojourner represents in the highest sense how the Lord made Divine His Natural; the statement here 'If I come back in peace to my father's house, then Jehovah will be my God' means the Lord's Human when united to His Divine. Furthermore that statement means that even as regards the Divine Natural also He was to be Jehovah through the Divine Essence united to the Human Essence, and the Human Essence united to the Divine Essence. One does not mean by this a union such as exists when two people who are separate individuals are bound together solely through love, as for example in the case of a father and a son, when the father loves the son and the son loves the father, or as when a brother loves a brother, or a friend loves a friend. Rather it is a real uniting together into a single whole, so that His two Essences are not two but one, which is also the Lord's teaching in many places. And being one, the whole of the Lord's Human is the Divine Being (Esse) or Jehovah, see 1343, 1736, 2156, 2329, 2447, 2921,

  
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Thanks to the Swedenborg Society for the permission to use this translation.