2025. That 'I will give to you, and to your seed after you, the land of your sojournings' means that the Lord acquired to Himself by His own powers all things meant by 'the land of sojournings' is clear from the meaning of 'sojourning' as receiving instruction, dealt with in 1463. And because man acquires life to himself chiefly through instruction in facts, matters of doctrine, and cognitions of faith, sojourning is consequently the life so acquired. When applied to the Lord it is the life which He obtained for Himself through cognitions, through the conflicts that constituted temptations, and through victories in temptations; and because He obtained it by His own powers, this is what 'the land of your sojournings' means here.

[2] That the Lord obtained all things for Himself by His own powers, and by His own powers united the Human Essence to the Divine Essence and Divine Essence to Human Essence, and that He alone in this way became righteousness, is quite clear in the Prophets, as in Isaiah,

Who is this coming from Edom, marching in the vast numbers of His strength? I have trodden the winepress alone, and from the peoples no one was with Me. I looked around and there was no one helping; and I was astonished that there was no one upholding; therefore My own arm brought Me salvation. Isaiah 63:1, 3, 5.

'Edom' stands for the Lord's Human Essence, 'strength' and 'arm' for power. Plain statements to the effect that He acted from His own power are contained in the phrases 'no one helping' and 'no one upholding', and in that about His own arm bringing Him salvation.

[3] In the same prophet,

He saw that there was no one, and wondered that there was nobody to intercede; and His own arm brought salvation to Him, and His righteousness upheld Him. And He put on righteousness as a breastplate, and a helmet of salvation on His head. Isaiah 59:16-17.

This similarly means that He acted by His own power, and in so doing became righteousness. That the Lord is righteousness is stated in Daniel,

Seventy weeks have been decreed to atone for iniquity, and to bring in everlasting righteousness, and to seal up vision and prophet, and to anoint the Most Holy Place. Daniel 9:24.

And in Jeremiah,

I will raise up for David a righteous branch, and He will reign as king and act with understanding, and He will execute judgement and righteousness in the land. In His days Judah will be saved, and Israel will dwell in confidence. And this is His name which they will call Him, Jehovah our Righteousness. Jeremiah 23:5-6; 33:15-16.

For this reason He is also called 'the Habitation of Righteousness' in Jeremiah 31:23; 50:7, and 'wonderful' and 'Hero' in Isaiah 9:6.

[4] The reason why the Lord so many times attributes to the Father that which is His own has been explained above in 1999, 2004; for Jehovah was within Him, and so within every single part of Him. Something similar in man may be used for illustration, although there can be no comparison. Within man is his soul, and because it is within him, the soul is within every individual part of him, that is to say, within every individual part of his thinking and every individual part of his activity. Anything that does not have his soul within it is not part of him. The Lord's soul was Life itself or Being (Esse) itself, which is Jehovah, for He was conceived from Jehovah; thus Life itself was present within every individual part of Him. And because Life itself, or Being (Esse) itself, which is Jehovah, belonged to Him in the way that the soul does to man, so that which was Jehovah's was His, which is what the Lord says in His statements about His being in the bosom of the Father, John 1:18, and about all things that the Father has being His, John 16:15; 17:10-11.

[5] From good which is Jehovah's He united the Divine Essence to the Human Essence, and from truth united the Human Essence to the Divine Essence, and so achieved every single thing all from Himself. Indeed His Human was left to Itself in order that of Himself He might fight against all the hells and overcome them; and because He had life within Himself, as stated, which was His own, He overcame them by His own power and strength, as is also clearly stated in the places quoted from the Prophets. So then, because He acquired all things to Himself by His own powers, He became Righteousness, cleared the world of spirits of hellish genii and spirits, and in so doing rescued the human race from destruction - for the human race is governed by means of spirits - and thus redeemed it. This is why the Old Testament Word speaks so often of Him as Rescuer and Redeemer, and also Saviour, as His name Jesus describes.

3833. 'And so it was in the evening' means when the state was still obscure. This is clear from the meaning of 'the evening' as an obscure state, dealt with in 3056. Furthermore feasts held in the evening, that is, suppers, meant nothing else among the ancients who had appropriate religious observances than the introductory state which comes before an actual joining together, which is obscure compared with that state when the joining together has taken place. Indeed when a person is being introduced into truth and from this into good, everything he learns at that time is obscure. But once good is joined to him and he regards truth from the standpoint of good, everything he learns becomes clear to him, gradually and increasingly so. For he is now no longer in doubt about whether something exists or whether it is true but knows that it exists and is true.

[2] Once a person has reached this state he starts to know countless things, for he now proceeds from the good and truth which he believes and perceives. He proceeds so to speak from the central point out to the peripheral regions; and in the measure that he proceeds from such good and truth, he sees in the same measure the things round about, and gradually more and more widely since he is constantly pushing out and extending the boundaries. Thereafter he also begins from each subject situated in the space within those boundaries, and from those subjects as new centres he pushes out new peripheral regions; and so on in the spaces within these. Consequently the light of truth radiating from good increases enormously and becomes one expanse of light, for he is now bathed in the light of heaven which shines from the Lord. But to people who are prone to doubt and who question whether something exists and is true, those countless, indeed limitless things are not visible at all. To them every single one is totally obscure. Those things are scarcely seen by them as a single whole which definitely exists, only as a single whole whose very existence they are uncertain of. Such is the condition into which human wisdom and intelligence has fallen at the present day. Being able to reason cleverly whether something exists is now the mark of a wise man, and being able to reason that it does not exist is the mark of one wiser still.

[3] Take for example the question whether in the Word an internal sense exists which such people call the mystical sense. Until they believe in the existence of it they cannot know a single one of the countless things existing within that sense, so many that they fill the whole of heaven in unending variety. Take as another example one who reasons about whether Divine Providence is merely universal and does not extend to specific details. That person cannot know the countless arcana which have to do with Providence, as many in number as the occurrences in everyone's life from start to finish and in the world from its creation to its end, and even for ever. Take as yet another example one who reasons whether good can exist in anyone, seeing that the will of man is fundamentally depraved. He cannot possibly be aware of all the arcana that have to do with regeneration, nor even that a new will is implanted by the Lord and the arcana concerning this. And the same is so with everything else. From this one may recognize what obscurity surrounds such people and that they do not even see, let alone reach, the outskirts of wisdom.