2767. That 'so it was after these events' means after these things had taken place is clear without explanation. These things, which have received explanation, are those to do with Abimelech and Abraham's making a covenant in Beersheba, and finally with Abraham's establishment of a grove in Beersheba, by which was meant that human rational ideas were allied to the doctrine of faith, which in itself is Divine. Now the subject becomes the temptation of the Lord as regards the Rational, meant by Isaac; for by means of temptations the Lord made His Human Divine, and thus His Rational in which the human has its beginnings, 2106, 2194. He made it Divine by suppressing and driving out everything in the rational which was merely human, that is, which was the maternal human. The present verse serves as the link between the matters dealt with in the previous chapter and those dealt with in this; hence the words that occur here, 'So it was after these events, that God tempted Abraham'.

2107. 'When he was circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin' means when the evils occupying the External Man were totally driven out. This is clear from the meaning of 'being circumcised' as being purified from self-love and love of the world, or what amounts to the same, being purified from evils, for those loves are the source of all evils, a matter dealt with above in 2039, 2041, 2053, 2057. And that the Lord drove out evils by His own power, and in so doing made the Human Essence Divine, has been shown in many places in Volume One, as well as in 2025 above.