1864. That 'on that day Jehovah made a covenant with Abram' means the joining together of the Lord's Interior Man and His Internal Man is clear from the meaning of 'a covenant' as a joining together, dealt with already in 665, 666, 1023, 1038. Here, because in the internal sense the Lord is the subject, it means an interior conjunction. For the Lord advanced more and more towards conjunction and union with Jehovah His Father, till at length He became one, that is, the Human Essence itself also became Jehovah, who was the Lord's Internal itself. These things were represented by 'the covenant which Jehovah made with Abram'. Anyone may see that Jehovah never makes a covenant with man, for such would be contrary to the Divine. What is man but something base and filthy, which of itself thinks and does nothing but evil? All the good that he does comes from Jehovah. From this it becomes clear that this covenant, like every other covenant made with Abram's descendants, was nothing else than a representative of the Divine and of the heavenly things of the kingdom of God. This particular covenant made with Abram was a representative of the joining together of the Lord's Human Essence and His Divine Essence, that is, Jehovah. That it was a representative of the joining together of the Lord's Interior Man and His Internal Man, that is, Jehovah, is clear from what has gone before - that the Lord joined and united Himself more and more through the conflicts brought about by temptations and through victories. What the Interior Man was has been stated already, namely that which was between the Internal and the External.

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.