10685. 'And he was with Jehovah forty days and forty nights' means temptations before the Church, worship, and the Word exist on an internal level. This is clear from the meaning of 'forty days and nights', when it has reference to the Church with a person, as states involving temptation, dealt with in 730, 862, 2272, 2273, 8098. Before the Church, worship, and the Word exist on an internal level is meant because temptations are the means by which the internal level in a person, called the internal man, is opened up to that person and handed over to him. Consequently everyone who is being regenerated undergoes temptations. The reason why temptations are the means by which the internal level is opened up and brought into existence is that while a person is embroiled in temptations, which are conflicts against evils and falsities, the Lord flows in from the interior and fights on the person's behalf. This may be recognized by a person from the fact that at the times when he is embroiled in temptations he inwardly offers resistance; for unless he did so he would not be victorious but would go under. He is not conscious of that inward resistance during temptations, because while embroiled in them he is in the dark, on account of the evil and falsities of evil that assail him; but after temptations those with a perception of truth are conscious of it. For while a person is living in the world he has no knowledge of the things which the Lord introduces into him on an internal level, because at that time, before he enters the next life, he thinks on the level of the external or natural man, and not perceptibly on an internal level. Nevertheless he ought to know and acknowledge, when victorious in temptations, that all the fighting was done not by himself but by the Lord on his behalf.

To command is to give an order that something must be done, and is directed to an individual, or a group. It is an imperative, not a suggestion. Commanding can be done in two ways, or from two differing motives. It often comes in an organization, where it is used to impose an order that is necessary to do the organization's work, such as a business, or government or an army, and can be legitimate, or is used in a family by parents to maintain an orderly home. But it can also be used by a person who loves power and having gotten it in some way, loves to impose his or her will on others for selfish gratification. So one motive is love of a use, or of good, and the other is for the love of self, or possessions. The Lord, from His infinite love, has given mankind commandments because He is order itself, and knows that our happiness to eternity depends on our acceptance of His order of creation, which ultimately is the only order that exists.