4075. 'And the God of my father has been with me' means that the Divine was the author of all that He had. This is clear from the fact that when used in reference to the Lord 'the God of His father' means the Divine which was His, and that 'has been with me' means the author of all that He had. When the Lord made the Human within Himself Divine, He too had communities of spirits and angels around Him; for it was His will that everything should be accomplished in keeping with order. But He chose for Himself the kind of communities that would be of service, and changed them as seemed good to Him. Yet He did not take any good or truth at all from them and apply it to Himself, but only from the Divine. And by acting in this way He also restored to order both heaven and hell; He restored them step by step until He had glorified Himself completely. The fact that these communities of spirits and angels were able to be of service and that the Lord took nothing from them can be shown from examples:

[2] Communities which are such that they believe good to originate in themselves, and as a consequence place merit in good deeds, served the use of introducing Him to a knowledge of such good, and from this knowledge to wisdom regarding good that is devoid of merit, such as originates in the Divine. That knowledge and wisdom deriving from it did not originate in those communities but was obtained through them. Take as another example communities which believe themselves to be rather wise, and yet reason about the validity of every aspect of good and truth. Such communities belong in the main to those which are spiritual. They served the use of introducing Him to a knowledge of those people and to how far they dwelt in shade in comparison with others, and that unless the Divine took pity on them they would perish. They also served to introduce Him to further things from the Divine which did not originate in those communities but were obtained through them.

[3] Take as yet another example communities which love God but believe that if they look to the Infinite, and so worship a God who is hidden from them, they are able to love Him. They cannot in fact do so unless by means of some idea or other they make that Infinite finite, or else within themselves visualize the hidden God by means of finite intellectual concepts. Otherwise it would be looking into thick darkness and embracing with love that which is enveloped in that darkness, and so would lead to further ill-formed and sketchy notions resulting from each person's own ideas. Such communities likewise served the use of introducing Him to a knowledge of the nature of the interior features of those people, and also to a knowledge of the nature of their love, as well as to a sense of pity for them, in that they could not be saved unless the Lord's Human was made Divine also for them to look to. This wisdom did not come from those communities but through them from the Divine. The same is so with any other examples that one might take. From all this one may see what is implied by the statement that nothing was taken from the good meant by 'Laban', but that the Divine - that is, the Lord Himself - was the author of everything He had.