2552. Abraham said. That this signifies a perception which is an answer, is evident from the signification of “saying” in the historicals of the Word, as explained many times before (n. 1791, 1815, 1819, 1822, 1898, 1919, 2061, 2080, 2238, 2260, 2271, 2287). With regard to the Lord’s thought from the doctrine of faith being signified by the words “Abimelech said to Abraham;” and the perception which was an answer being meant by “Abraham said,” the case is this: perception is a higher thing, and the Lord had it from the Divine Itself; whereas thought is a lower thing, and the Lord had it from the intellectual itself; and as it was perception from which He had the thought, so the answer of the thought was from perception. This may be illustrated by something similar with man. The celestial man cannot think except from perception, nor the spiritual man except from conscience (n. 2515). The perception of the former, like the conscience [of the latter] is from the Lord, and it is not apparent to the man himself whence it is; but his thought is from the rational, and appears to him as from himself. And so again, when a man is thinking concerning any subject from the rational, then the conclusion of the thought, or the answer, comes either from perception or from conscience; consequently an answer is given him by the Lord in accordance with his state of life, his affection, and the truth of doctrine implanted or impressed in agreement therewith.

1815. He said unto him, I am Jehovah. That this signifies the Lord’s internal man, which is Jehovah, and from which He had perception, is evident from what has been already said, namely, that the Lord’s Internal, that is, whatever the Lord received from the Father, was Jehovah in Him, for He was conceived from Jehovah. What a man receives from his father is one thing, and what he receives from his mother is another. From his father a man receives all that is internal, his soul itself or life being from the father; but he receives from his mother all that is external. In a word, the interior man, or spirit itself, is from the father; but the outer man, or body itself, is from the mother; which everyone can comprehend merely from the fact that the soul itself is implanted by the father, and this begins to clothe itself in a little bodily form in the ovum. Whatever is afterwards added, whether in the ovum or in the womb, is of the mother, for it has no increase from anywhere else.

[2] It may be seen from this that as to His internals the Lord was Jehovah. But because the external, which the Lord received from the mother, was to be united to the Divine or Jehovah, and this through temptations and victories, as before said, it could not appear otherwise to Him in those states, than that when He spoke with Jehovah it was as it were with another; when yet He spoke with Himself, that is, so far as He was in a state of conjunction. The Lord’s perception, which He had in the highest perfection above all who have been born, was from His Internal, that is, from Jehovah Himself, which is here signified in the internal sense by the words, “Jehovah said unto him.”