In a general sense, being "born" in the Bible represents one spiritual state producing another, usually some form of love or affection producing or "giving birth" to truth or to desires for good. This is not hard to see: If you love someone, that love naturally gives birth to ideas on how to be good to that person and make him or her happy. This is why sons and daughters in the Bible represent true ideas and desires for good. On a higher level, though, being born represents what the Writings call "regeneration," or the life-long process of putting off our natural thoughts and desires and embracing spiritual life from the Lord. This is what the Bible means when it talks about being "born again" – if we live our lives from the Lord, He will eventually take away our evil desires so that we can be "born" as angels in heaven, free of evil desires and dark thoughts. Of course, these two levels of meaning are really one: The Lord is love itself, and if we align with Him we become forms of love and truth ourselves, expressions of His love just as the desire to do something good might be the expression of your love for a friend.

5348. 'And to Joseph were born two sons' means the good and truth born from this, that is to say, from the influx of the celestial of the spiritual into the natural. This is clear from the meaning of 'being born' as being reborn, and so the birth of truth derived from good or faith derived from charity, dealt with in 4070, 4668, 5160 (for the generations described in the Word are spiritual ones, see 1145, 1255, 1330, 3263, 3279, 3860, 3866); and from the meaning of 'sons', who in this case are Manasseh and Ephraim, as good and truth, dealt with immediately below. For 'Manasseh' means the area of will belonging to the new natural, while 'Ephraim' means the area of understanding belonging to it. Or what amounts to the same, 'Manasseh' means the good present in the new natural, since good exists as an attribute of the will, while 'Ephraim' means the truth present there, since truth exists as an attribute of the understanding. One reads in other places about the birth of two sons. Good is meant by one, truth by the other, as for instance with Esau and Jacob. 'Esau' means good, see 3302, 3322, 3494, 3504, 3576, 3599, while 'Jacob' means truth, 3305, 3509, 3525, 3546, 3576. The like is meant by Judah's two sons by Tamar, Perez and Zerah, 4927-4929; and the same applies here in the case of Manasseh and Ephraim. The birth of these is dealt with here because the subject in what went immediately before this was the influx of the celestial of the spiritual into the natural and the consequent rebirth of it, which is effected solely by means of good and truth.

3017. 'And Jehovah blessed Abraham in all things' means when all things had been re-arranged by the Lord into Divine order, or what amounts to the same, when the Lord had re-arranged all things into Divine order. This is clear from the consideration that 'Jehovah' is the Lord as regards the Divine Itself, 1343, 1736, 1815, 2004, 2005, 2018, 2025, 2921, in which case 'Abraham' represents the Lord as regards the Divine Human, 2833, 2836. Consequently when it is said that 'Jehovah blessed Abraham in all things' the meaning in the internal sense is that the Lord from the Divine Itself re-arranged all things in His Human into Divine order, for when 'blessing' is spoken of in regard to the Lord's Human it means those things. 'Being blessed', when it has reference to man, means being enriched with spiritual and celestial good, 981, 1096, 1420, 1422; and he is so enriched when the things residing with him are re-arranged by the Lord into a spiritual and celestial order, and so into the image and likeness of Divine order, 2475. The regeneration of man is nothing else.

[2] But what is described by the statement that all things were re-arranged into Divine order by the Lord within the Divine Human is evident from what follows in the present chapter. It describes how His Divine Rational, represented by Isaac, which had been conceived from the Divine Good, represented by Abraham, and born from the Divine Truth, represented by Sarah, was now re-arranged into that Divine order, to the end that Divine Truths from the Human itself could be joined to it. These are the arcana which this chapter contains in the internal sense and which angels possess from the Lord in full light, for in the light of heaven they are plain to see as if in broad daylight. But in the light of the world in which man dwells hardly anything is visible except dimly and in some small measure with a regenerate person, since he also dwells in some light belonging to heaven.