3375. And I will set up the oath which I sware unto Abraham thy father. That this signifies confirmation, is evident from the signification of an “oath,” or of “swearing,” as being confirmation (n. 2842). It is not here said to “set up the covenant” made with Abraham, but the “oath,” for the reason that a “covenant” is predicated of the celestial or of good, but an “oath” of the spiritual or of truths (n. 3037), which are the subject here treated of. And for the same reason in what follows it is not said of Isaac that he “made a covenant with Abimelech,” but that he “sware a man to his brother” (verse 31); whereas it is said of Abraham that he and Abimelech “made a covenant” (Genesis 21:32; see Psalms 105:8-10). By the confirmation here referred to which is signified by an “oath,” there is meant the conjunction of the Lord with those who are in His kingdom; for an “oath” is the confirmation of a covenant; and by a “covenant” is signified conjunction (n. 665, 666, 1023, 1038, 1864, 1996, 2003, 2021).

1864. In that day Jehovah made a covenant with Abram. That this signifies the conjunction of the Lord’s interior man with His Internal, is evident from the signification of a “covenant,” as being conjunction (explained before, n. 665, 666, 1023, 1038). And as the Lord is here treated of in the internal sense, it signifies interior conjunction. For the Lord advanced more and more to conjunction and union with Jehovah His Father, until He became One, that is, the Human Essence itself also became Jehovah, who was the Lord’s Internal itself. These things were represented by the covenant which Jehovah made with Abram. Everyone can see that Jehovah never makes a covenant with a man, for this would be contrary to the Divine. What is a man but something vile and filthy, which of itself thinks and does nothing but evil? All the good that he does is from Jehovah; from which it may be seen that this covenant, like other covenants with Abram’s posterity, was nothing but a representative of the Divine, and of the celestial things of the kingdom of God; in the present case that the covenant was representative of the conjunction of the Lord’s Human Essence with His Divine Essence, that is, with Jehovah. That it was representative of the conjunction of the Lord’s interior man with His Internal, that is, Jehovah, is evident from what has been said before, namely, that by the combats and victories of temptations the Lord conjoined and united Himself more and more. What His interior man was, has been told before, namely, that it was intermediate between the internal man and the external.