When the Bible speaks of "Jehovah," it is representing love itself, the inmost love that is the essence of the Lord. That divine love is one, whole and complete in itself, and Jehovah also is one, a name applied only to the Lord. The divine love expresses itself in the form of wisdom. Love, then, is the essence of God -- His inmost. Wisdom -- the loving understanding of how to put love into action -- is slightly more external, giving love a way to express itself. Wisdom, however, is expressed in a great variety of thoughts and ideas, what the Writings collectively call divine truth. There are also many imaginary gods, and sometimes angels and people can be called gods (the Lord said Moses would be as a god to Aaron). So when the Bible calls the Lord "God," it is in most cases referring to divine truth. In other cases, "God" has reference to what is called the divine human. The case there is this: As human beings, we cannot engage the Lord directly as divine love. It is too powerful and too pure. Instead, we have to approach Him by understanding Him through divine truth. Divine truth, then, is the Lord in human form, a form we can approach and understand. Thus "God" is also used in reference to this human aspect, because it is an expression of truth.

10730. 'And the seventh day shall be a holy day for you, a sabbath of rest to Jehovah' means the second state in the regeneration of a person, when that person is joined to the Lord, and in the highest sense means the union of the Lord's Human with the Divine itself. This is clear from the representation of 'the sabbath' as the second state in the regeneration of a person, when a person is governed by good and for that reason is led by the Lord, dealt with in 8510, 8890, 8893, 9274, and in the highest sense as the union of the Human with the Divine itself within the Lord, dealt with in 8495, 10356, 10367, 10374. When the Lord was in the world He first made His Human Divine Truth, but when He left the world He made His Human Divine Good through union with the Divine itself which was within Him. This is represented by 'the sabbath' in the highest sense, hence the use of the words 'a sabbath of rest to Jehovah'. The Lord does things in a similar way for a person whom He is regenerating. First He endows the person with truths, after which He uses the truths to join him to good, thus to Himself. This is what 'the sabbath' represents in the relative sense; for the regeneration of a person is an image of the glorification of the Lord, that is, as the Lord glorified His Human, so He regenerates a person.

[2] Strictly speaking, 'the sabbath' means rest and peace, because when the Lord united His Human to the Divine itself He had peace. For now conflicts had come to an end and all things in the heavens and in the hells had been restored to order, so that not only did He Himself have peace but also angels in heaven and people on earth dwelt in peace and safety.

[3] Since these two processes are the all-embracing realities on which everything else in the Church is dependent, only the sanctifying of the sabbath, which serves to mean those two realities, is declared here ¹ . For the most all-embracing reality is that the Lord has united His Human to the Divine itself, as a result of which a person can dwell in peace and safety. And it is also an all-embracing reality that a person should be joined to the Lord, which is effected through regeneration bringing him that peace and safety. This also was why the sabbath among the Israelite nation was the chief representative and was the chief sign of the covenant with Jehovah, that is, of being joined to the Lord, see 10357, 10372, a covenant being a joining together.

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