3910. 'And he said, Am I in God's place' means that that good was powerless. This is clear from the meaning of 'not being in God's place' as powerlessness, for the name 'God' is derived from potentiality (posse) or power (potentia), whereas the name 'Jehovah' is derived from being (esse) or essence (essentia), see 300. Consequently 'God' is used when truth is the subject and 'Jehovah' when good is the subject, 2769, 2807, 2822, since potentiality (posse) is used in reference to truth, and being (esse) to good. Indeed it is through truth that good has any power, for it is through truth that good can effect anything that comes into being. From this it may be seen that the words 'Am I in God's place' in the internal sense mean that natural good was powerless.

300. As regards the first arcanum, that 'Jehovah God' is used to mean the Lord and at the same time heaven, it should be recognized that in the Word, always for some hidden reason, the Lord is sometimes called simply Jehovah, sometimes Jehovah God, sometimes Jehovah and God interchangeably, sometimes the Lord Jehovah, sometimes the God of Israel, and sometimes simply God. In Genesis 1, for example, where again an utterance is made in the plural, 'Let Us make man in Our image', God is the only name used. Not until the next chapter, where the celestial man is the subject, is He called Jehovah God-Jehovah, because He alone has Being and is Living, and so from His essence; God, because of His ability to accomplish all things, and so from His power, as is clear in the Word where the two names are used separately, Isaiah 49:4-5; 55:7; Psalms 18:2, 28, 30-31; Psalms 38:15. Consequently any angel or spirit who spoke to a person, or who people thought had the ability to accomplish something, they called God, as is clear in David,

God stands in the assembly of God, in the midst of the Gods will He judge. Psalms 82:1.

And elsewhere in David,

Who in the sky will be compared to Jehovah? Who will be likened to Jehovah among the sons of gods? Psalms 89:6.

And elsewhere in the same,

Confess the God of Gods; confess the Lord of lords. Psalms 136:2-3

It is from power that even men are called 'gods', as in Psalms 82:6; John 10:34-35. And Moses is spoken of as 'a god to Pharaoh', Exodus 7:1. And this also is why [in Hebrew] the word for God, Elohim, is plural. But because angels have no power whatsoever from themselves, as they themselves also confess, but from the Lord only, and as there is but one God, Jehovah God is therefore used in the Word to mean the Lord alone. Yet when anything is accomplished through the ministry of angels He is spoken of in the plural, as in Genesis 1. In the present chapter too, since a celestial man, as man, did not bear comparison with the Lord, but with angels, it is therefore said that 'the man has become as one of Us in knowing good and evil', that is, become someone wise and having intelligence.