459. These words [Gen. 24:2-9] make it quite clear now that this precept was such a very strict legal and religious obligation that if their descendants should fail to observe it, they would entirely nullify every promise and blessing given to Abraham and Isaac. Certainly, they would not possess the land of Canaan, much less have the Messiah born from their lineage; consequently they would be outside the Kingdom of God. Since the hope and the actual attainment of that promise and blessing depended on their keeping this precept most sacred thereafter, it is no wonder that everyone was commanded to enter into marriages within their 1. own families or stock. But how the Jews later observed it will appear from their history. That this precept was a matter of the strictest law was, as said, solely on account of the Messiah. He was the seed in which Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, and all their descendants, as well as all the nations of the whole world, would be blessed [Gen. 18:18, 22:18], as so very often said above. Now this stem, from which the Messiah was to come, was later called the stem of David. And being a root and stem, it was likened to a tree into which the descendants of Abraham and Isaac would be ingrafted as branches. So there would surely come forth a tree like the one which had been in the midst of the Paradise at the first creation, called the tree of life. Now to insure that those branches, and thus the whole tree, would not be spurious, but legitimate, like the one in the Paradise of old from which Adam was cast out lest he touch it [Gen.] 3:22, they had to observe most strictly the law limiting marriages only to the closest relatives. This was the reason why the Jewish and Israelitish people were so severely forbidden to marry Canaanites and strangers. For in that people the Messiah willed to bring back, and thus to create anew, not only the Tree of life, but also the whole Paradise. The tribes of Israel would be like the trees of that Paradise, but the tribe of Judah, the Tree of Life Itself in their midst. This could never have been accomplished without marriages from closest relatives. 2. (These words, together with those above starting with verse 41, were said to me verbally, and practically announced, and in fact by little children who were with me at the time and even spoke through my mouth, and also guided my very hand.) [Marriage; Little child (Infant); Hand]