9009. 'And one who did not lie in wait' means when it was not contemplated beforehand by the will. This is clear from the meaning of 'lying in wait' as doing what has been thought up and so contemplated beforehand; for the ill that one lying in wait is going to do is contemplated in his mind beforehand. And since such ill done by him is contemplated beforehand it also has its origin in the will, for it comes forth from there. There are evils which come forth from a person's will but are not contemplated beforehand, and there those which come forth from his will and are contemplated beforehand. Those from the will and contemplated beforehand are far worse than those uncontemplated beforehand. For the person sees that they are evils and is therefore able to desist from them, but has no wish to; and by failing to do so he establishes them firmly within himself. And firmly established evils take on a character that makes it almost impossible for them to be rooted out afterwards. For at this time he summons spirits from hell, who after that rarely depart.

[2] Evils that come forth from one part of the mind and not at the same time from the other, such as those from the understanding part and not at the same time from the will part, do not take root and become the person's own. That alone takes root and becomes his own which passes from the understanding part into the will part, or what amounts to the same thing, from thought belonging to the understanding into affection belonging to the will, and from there into action. Things that enter the will are those which are said to enter the heart.

[3] Evils however which come forth solely from the will, thus not from prior thought about them, are those such as a person is prone to owing to heredity or owing to some previous activity resulting from hereditary inclinations. These evils are not ascribed to the person unless he has established them firmly in the understanding part of his mind, 966, 2308, 8806. But when they have been firmly established there they have been inscribed on the person, becoming properly his own; then they are attributable to him. But those evils cannot become firmly established with a person in the understanding part of his mind until he reaches adult life, that is to say, when he starts to think for himself and be wise. Till then he trusts not in himself but in teachers and parents.

All this shows what the meaning is of 'one who did not lie in wait', namely when it was not contemplated beforehand by the will.

19. (i) THE ONE GOD IS NAMED JEHOVAH FROM HIS BEING, THAT IS, FROM THE FACT THAT HE ALONE IS, [WAS] AND WILL BE, AND BECAUSE HE IS THE FIRST AND THE LAST, THE BEGINNING AND THE END, ALPHA AND OMEGA.

It is well known that Jehovah means 'I am' and 'Being'. It is clear from the Book of Creation, called Genesis, that God was so called from most ancient times; for there He is called God in the first chapter, but in the second and subsequent ones Jehovah God. Later on when the descendants of Abraham, starting with Jacob, forgot the name of God owing to their long stay in Egypt, it was recalled to their memory. About this we read:

Moses said to God, What is your name? God said, I am who I am; thus

shall you say to the Children of Israel, I am has sent me to you; and you shall say, Jehovah the God of your fathers has sent me to you. This is my name for ever, and this is my memorial from generation to generation, Exodus 3:13-15.

Since God alone is I am or Being, that is, Jehovah, therefore there cannot be anything in the created universe which does not owe its being to Him; how this happens will be seen below. The same is meant also by these words:

I am the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End, Alpha and Omega, Isaiah 44:6; Revelation 1:8, 11; 22:13.

This means that He is the one single source from beginning to end, from which everything comes.

[2] God is called Alpha and Omega ¹ , the Beginning and the End, because alpha is the first and omega the last letter in the Greek alphabet, and they thus mean everything taken together. The reason is that every letter of the alphabet in the spiritual world stands for some thing. Vowels, which allow words to be pronounced, stand for something to do with affection or love. This is the origin of the speech of spirits or angels, and also of their writing-systems. But this is a mystery not previously known: there is a universal language used by all angels and spirits, which has nothing in common with any human language in the world. Everyone comes into possession of this language after death, for it is inborn in everyone from his creation. Therefore everyone throughout the spiritual world can understand everyone else. I have often been permitted to hear that language, and I have compared it with languages in the world, and found that it does not agree in the slightest detail with any natural language on earth. It differs from them in its basic principle, which is that each letter of every word stands for some thing. That can now be seen to be the reason why God is called Alpha and Omega, the one single source from beginning to end, from which everything comes. On this language and its writing-system, which is derived from the spiritual thought of angels, see Conjugial Love 326-329, and also further in this book [280, 365, 386].

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