3161. 'Behold, Rebekah is before you; take her and go, and let her be your master's son's wife, as Jehovah has spoken' means consent inspired from the Lord. This too could be shown by an explanation of all the individual words, the general import of these in the internal sense being the meaning that has just been stated. The implications are as follows: When the Lord lived in the world He made the Human within Himself Divine by His own power, the human with everyone having its beginnings in the inmost part of the rational, 2106, 2194. This verse describes how He made it Divine, that is to say, already so as of good and of truth. The good there came from His essential Divinity, that is, from Jehovah the Father from whom He had been conceived; but the truth there had to be acquired by the ordinary way, as with every other human being.

[2] It is well known that nobody is born rational but merely into the ability to become so, and that he becomes rational by means of factual knowledge, that is to say, by means of cognitions which divide up into many genera and species, the first of which are the means leading on to those next to them, and so on in order to the last of all which are cognitions of the spiritual things of the Lord's kingdom and are called matters of doctrine. These latter cognitions are learned in part from the doctrine of faith, in part directly from the Word, and in part therefore by a person's own efforts, as is also well known. As long as these matters of doctrine remain solely in the memory they are merely factual truths and have not as yet been made over to the individual as his own. They first become made over to him when he starts to love them for the sake of life, and more so when he applies them to life. When this happens truths are raised up from the natural memory into the rational part of the mind and are there joined to good. And when they have been joined they are no longer matters of knowledge but of life, for in that case a person is no longer learning from truths how to live but actually living by them. In this way truths come to be his own and become matters of the will. He accordingly enters the heavenly marriage, for the heavenly marriage consists in good and truth joined together in the rational. With men these things are accomplished by the Lord.

[3] But in Himself the Lord did this by Himself, unaided. From the Divine itself He not only begot the Rational as regards Good, but also through this the Natural as regards Truth, which He joined to Good. For it is good that chooses truth for itself and also gives form to it, for good acknowledges nothing else as truth but that which is compatible with it. Thus Divine good that was the Lord's moulded Truth for itself. Nor did it acknowledge as Truth anything else than that which would be compatible with Divine Good, that is, which would be Divine of Itself. Thus He achieved every single thing by His own power. These are the things that are meant by 'acknowledgement that it was the Lord's alone' and by 'consent inspired from the Lord'.

2156. 'My Lord' means the Three in One, that is to say, the Divine itself, the Divine Human, and the Holy proceeding; and as the Three exist in One the word 'Lord' in the singular is used, as similarly it is used -

In verses 27, 31 'Behold now, I have undertaken to speak to my Lord'.

In verses 30, 32, 'Let not now my Lord be incensed'.

The three men are also called Jehovah -

In verse 13, Jehovah said to Abraham.

In verse 14, 'Will anything to be too wonderful for Jehovah?'

In verse 22, Abraham still stood before Jehovah.

In verse 33, And Jehovah departed, when He had finished speaking to Abraham.

From these places it is clear that the three men, that is, the Divine itself, the Divine Human, and the Holy proceeding, are one and the same as the Lord, and the Lord one and the same as Jehovah. In the statement of Christian faith called the Creed the same is recognized, where it is explicitly stated,

There are not three uncreated, not three infinites, not three eternals, not three almighties, not three Lords, but One.

There are none who separate Three that are within a One, apart from those who say that they acknowledge one Supreme Being, the Creator of the Universe. Such an acknowledgement is excusable among those outside the Church; but in the case of those inside the Church who declare the same, these do not acknowledge any God at all, though they say and sometimes think it. Still less do they acknowledge the Lord.