21. (iii) THE DIVINE BEING IS BEING (ESSE) IN ITSELF, AND AT THE SAME TIME COMING-INTO-BEING (EXISTERE) IN ITSELF.

Jehovah God is Being in itself, because He is I am, the very, sole and prime source, from eternity to eternity, of everything in existence, which allows it to exist. In this and no other sense He is the Beginning and the End, the First and the Last, Alpha and Omega. One cannot say that His Being is from itself, because 'out of itself' presupposes what is earlier and thus time; but time is inconsistent with the Infinite, which is said to be 'from eternity'. It also presupposes another God, who is God in Himself, and thus God originating from God; in other words, that God formed Himself, so that He could not be uncreated or infinite, because in this case He would have distinguished Himself either from Himself or from another.

It follows from the fact that God is Being in itself that He is Love in itself, Wisdom in itself and Life in itself, and that it is He who is the source of everything, who is the point of reference of everything, if it is to exist. It is clear from the Lord's words in John (John 5:26) that God is Life in itself and thus God; and in Isaiah:

I, Jehovah, make all things, I alone spread out the heavens and stretch out the earth by Myself, Isaiah 44:24.

and that He is the only God and there is no God beside Him (Isaiah 45:14-15, 21-22; Hosea 13:4).

[2] The reason why God is not only Being in itself, but also Coming-into-Being in itself is that unless Being comes into being it does not exist; and likewise Coming-into-Being can only arise from Being. Therefore the one supposes the other. In the same way form cannot exist without substance; nothing can be predicated of substance unless it has form, and what is devoid of qualities is in itself nothing. The terms Being (Esse) and Coming-into-Being (Existere) are used here, not Essence and Existence, because a distinction should be made between Being and Essence, and therefore between Coming-into-Being and Existence, similar to that between prior and posterior, and what is prior is more universal than what is posterior. Infinity and eternity are applicable to the Divine Being, but the Divine Love and the Divine Wisdom and through them both omnipotence and omnipresence are applicable to the Divine Essence and Existence. These subjects will be discussed in their proper place.

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.