10374. 'And on the seventh day He rested and recovered His breath' means the state of good when the Church has been established, or when a person has been regenerated. This is clear from the meaning of 'the seventh day' as the holy state which constitutes the Church when it is governed by good, thus when it has been established, or when a member of the Church is governed by good, thus when he has been regenerated. In the highest sense 'the seventh day' and Jehovah's 'resting and recovering His breath' mean the union within the Lord of the Divine itself, called the Father, and the Divine Human, called the Son; and so they mean the time when the Lord, as to His Divine Human as well, had become the Divine Good of Divine Love, that is, Jehovah. This explains why 'seven' in the Word means that which is holy, see 395, 433, 716, 881, 5265, 5268. The reason why it says that on that day Jehovah rested and recovered His breath is that the Lord's Human was now above all molestations from hell, and heaven and earth were now subject to His control, Matthew 28:18. Heaven too now had rest and recovered its breath, because the Lord had now restored all things in heaven to order and had subdued the hells. The like was so on earth, for once heaven existed in a state of order and the hells had been subdued people could be saved. From this it is evident that Jehovah's rest consists in peace and safety for angels in heaven and people on earth. These they have when they are governed by good, and through this abide in the Lord.

665. That establishing a covenant' means that he would be regenerated becomes quite clear from the fact that the only kind of covenant that can exist between the Lord and man is conjunction by virtue of love and faith. And so a covenant means conjunction; indeed it is the heavenly marriage that is the supreme covenant of all. The heavenly marriage or conjunction does not show itself however except with people who are being regenerated. Regeneration itself therefore in the broadest sense is meant by a covenant. The Lord enters into a covenant with man when He regenerates him, and consequently among men of old a covenant had no other representation. From the sense of the letter no other impression is gained than that the covenant made with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and so often with their descendants, concerned just those personages. But those people were by nature such as to be incapable of being regenerated, for they focused worship exclusively on things that were external, and imagined external things to be sacred without things that are internal allied to them. Consequently the covenants made with them were no more than representations of regeneration, as were all their religious ceremonies, and as were Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob themselves who represented the things of love and faith. In a similar way priests or high priests, whatever their character, including infamous ones, could represent the heavenly and most holy priesthood. In representations no attention is paid to the person who represents but to that which is represented by him. Thus all the kings of Israel and Judah, including the worst of them, represented the Lord's kingship, and so indeed did the Pharaoh who promoted Joseph over the land of Egypt. These and many other considerations which in the Lord's Divine mercy will be dealt with later on show that the covenants made so often with the sons of Jacob were nothing more than religious ceremonies which were representative.