41. Anything that is man's own has no life in it; and when depicted visually it looks like something hard as a bone and black. But anything that comes from the Lord does contain life. It has that which is spiritual and celestial within it, and when depicted visually it looks human and alive. It is perhaps incredible, but nevertheless absolutely true, that every expression, every idea, and every least thought of an angelic spirit is alive. In even the most detailed areas of his thought there is an affection that comes from the Lord, who is life itself. Consequently all that derives from the Lord has life within it, for it contains faith in Him, and is here meant by 'a living creature'. It then has the outward appearance of a body, meant here by that which is moving, or creeping. To man these matters remain arcana, but since the subject here is the living and moving creature, they ought at least to be mentioned here.

2213. 'About this time next year, and Sarah will have a son' means that the Lord would at that point cast off the human rational and put on the Divine Rational. This is clear from the meaning of 'returning at this time of life', or 'at this time next year', as the joining together of the Divine with the Lord's Human, dealt with above in 2193, and from the meaning of 'Sarah's having a son' as the Rational that was to be Divine, also dealt with above, in 2194. 'This time of life', or 'this time next year', denotes the time when Abraham would be entering his hundredth year, which year means when the Lord's Human had become united to the Divine, and the Divine to the Human, as shown above in 1988. There was an interval of a year because 'a year' in the Word does not mean a year but an entire length of time, thus a whole period, whether of a thousand years, or of a hundred, or of ten, or of hours, as also shown already, in 482, 487, 488, 493, 893; and the same applies to a week, dealt with in 2044.