8. The second state is when a distinction is made between the things that are the Lord's and those that are man's own. Those which are the Lord's are called in the Word 'remnants', and here they are chiefly the cognitions of faith which a person has learned since he was a small child. These are stored away and do not come out into the open until he reaches this state. Nowadays this state rarely occurs without temptation, misfortune, and sorrow, which lead to the inactivity and so to speak the death of bodily and worldly concerns - the things which are man's own. In this way what belongs to the external man is segregated from what belongs to the internal. Within the internal are the remnants, stored away by the Lord until this time and for this purpose.

6003. 'And He said, I am God, the God of your father' means the Divine Intellectual, the source of what flowed in. This is clear from the representation of Isaac, to whom his 'father' refers here, as the Lord's Divine Rational or Intellectual, as above in 5998, for the words 'God, the God of your father' are used. The reason why this is the source of what flows in is that all truth is seen by the understanding or intellect, including natural truth, which is represented by 'Jacob', 6001. For what the Divine Rational or Intellectual represented by 'Isaac' is, see 1893, 2066, 2072, 2083, 2630, 3012, 3194, 3210. In the original language the singular form of the name for God is used first, then the plural form; that is to say, El is used first, then Elohim. The reason for this is that the first use of the name 'God' means that God is one and alone, while the second use means that He has many attributes; and this is why Elohim, the plural form of the name, is used, as it is practically everywhere else in the Word. Because of His many attributes and because the Ancient Church gave a name to each of them, the descendants of that Church, among whom the knowledge of such matters had become lost, consequently thought that there were many gods, one of which each family then chose to be its own particular deity. Abram chose Shaddai, 1992, 3667, 5628, and Isaac chose the God called Pachad or Dread. And since each family's God was one of God's attributes, the Lord therefore said to Abram, 'I am God Shaddai', Genesis 17:1, and to Jacob here, 'I am the God of your father'.