4377. 'And he said to him, My lord knows that the children are tender' means truths which have not yet acquired Divine life. This is clear from the meaning of 'children' or sons as truths, dealt with in 489, 491, 533, 1147, 2623, 3373, and from the meaning of 'tender ones' as truths that are recent and so those which have acquired some life but not as yet genuine life, in this case Divine Life since the subject is the glorification of the Lord's Divine Natural. These matters can be illustrated by means of what happens to a person who is being regenerated, for the regeneration of man is a model of the glorification of the Lord. A person who is being regenerated passes through different phases, akin to those which follow birth - phases akin to infancy, childhood, adolescence or youth, and adult years. Indeed a person who is being regenerated is born anew. During the phase when he is an infant the truths he knows do indeed possess life, though not as yet spiritual life. At this stage they are merely general truths which lack particular and specific ones, yet to which good is being joined. That joining of truths to good is therefore purely exterior, not interior. A more interior joining together of them is effected step by step as he advances into the phases that follow infancy. It is the state belonging to this type of infancy that is meant by the reference to the children being tender and by what is said immediately after that - 'and the flocks and herds with me are suckling, and if the men overdrive them for one day, all the flocks will die'.

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.