3687. 'And Esau went to Ishmael, and took Mahalath the daughter of Ishmael, Abraham's son' means the joining of that good to truth from a Divine source. This is clear from the representation of 'Esau' as the good of the natural, dealt with above, and from the representation of 'Ishmael the son of Abraham' as truth from a Divine source - 'Ishmael' representing the Lord's spiritual Church, and consequently truth, see 1949-1951, 2078, 2691, 2699, 3268, and 'Abraham' the Lord's Divine, which is called 'the Father', 2010, 3251, 3439. Consequently 'Mahalath the daughter of Ishmael, Abraham's son' means truth from a Divine source. That 'taking a wife' means being brought into association or joined together is self-evident. From this it is clear that 'Esau went to Ishmael, and took Mahalath the daughter of Ishmael, Abraham's son' means the joining of that good to truth from a Divine source.

2010. Now because the word 'names means the essential nature, and also the knowledge of that nature, the meaning of the statement made in this verse becomes clear. That is to say, 'No longer will you be called by your name Abram, but your name will be Abraham' means, not what his nature had been previously but what it was going to be. The fact that Abram served other gods and worshipped the god Shaddai was shown above in 1992; but because he was to represent the Lord, and in particular His Internal Man, and so the celestial side of His love, his previous nature had to be effaced, that is, the name Abram had to be altered to another which was such that the Lord could be represented by means of it. The letter H therefore was taken from the name Jehovah - which letter alone in the name Jehovah entails the Divine, and means I AM or TO BE - and was inserted into his name, so that he was called Abraham. The same happened with Sarai further on; the same letter was added to her name, so that she was called Sarah. From this it also becomes clear that in the internal sense of the Word Abraham represents Jehovah or the Lord.

[2] It should be realized however that in representations no significance is attached to the nature or character of the one who represents, for in those representations no attention is paid to the person representing but to the thing which he represents, as stated and shown already in 665, 1097 (end), 1361. Therefore the meaning of the words here in the internal sense is that the Lord cast off the human and put on the Divine, which is also the particular point in the train of thought both before and after this statement, for the promise is now made concerning Isaac his son, who was to represent the Lord's Divine Rational.