6098. 'And they have not attained to the days of the years of the life of my fathers' means that it did not come up to their state of life. ¹ This is clear from the meaning of 'attaining to' here as coming up to, dealt with below; and from the meaning of 'the days' and 'the years of life' as states of spiritual life, as above in 6093, 6095, 6097. The reason 'attaining to' here means coming up to is that his fathers Isaac and Abraham represented higher, that is, more internal, things than he. 'Abraham' in the highest sense represented the Lord's Divine itself, 'Isaac' the Lord's Divine Rational, and 'Jacob' His Divine Natural. For the representation of 'Abraham' as the Lord's Divine itself, see 1965, 1989, 2011, 7245, 7251, 3305 (end), 3439, 3703, 4615; for the representation of 'Isaac' as the Divine Rational, 1893, 2066, 2072, 2083, 2630, 2774, 3012, 3194, 3210, 4615; and for the representation of 'Jacob' as the Divine Natural in respect of truth and in respect of good, 3305, 3509, 3525, 3546, 3576, 3599, 4286, 4538, 4570, 4615. That being so, 'Abraham' also represents the celestial degree with man, 'Isaac' the spiritual degree, and 'Jacob' the natural, for the reason that the regeneration of man is an image of the Glorification of the Lord, 3138, 3212, 3296, 3490, 4402, 5688. From all this one may now see that 'they have not attained to the days of the years of the life of my fathers' means that it did not come up to their state of life.

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1965. This then is the internal sense of the details in this chapter concerning Abram, Hagar, and Ishmael. Yet how inexhaustible that sense is, that is, how limitless the details it contains, may be seen from the single consideration that, as every single thing in the Word looks in the internal sense to the Lord and has the Lord as its subject, the life of the Word, being the Word itself, arises out of this. In addition every single thing has at the same time in the internal sense the Lord's kingdom in heaven as its subject, and also His kingdom on earth, which is the Church. And in a similar way it has as its subject each individual who has the Lord's kingdom within him, besides having in general everything celestial or spiritual as its subject. For the Lord is the source of all these things, and this accounts for Abram's also representing the celestial Church, the celestial man, as well as the celestial itself, and so on. To extend the explanation any further however would take much too long.