5042. 'And showed mercy to him' means Divine love within every individual thing. This is clear from the meaning of 'mercy' in the highest sense as Divine Love, dealt with in 1735, 3063, 3073, 3120, 3875. The Divine Being (Esse) itself is that Love which is meant in the highest sense and is completely beyond human comprehension. Acting by means of truth, that love brings all things into being and keeps them in being, both those which are animate and those which are inanimate. This Divine Love that emanated from that Essential Being (Esse) was flowing through the inmost centre of life within the Lord into every individual thing He did from the human which He had taken to Himself from His mother; it directed His attention towards particular ends, leading on to the final one, which was that the human race might be saved. And because the Lord could see, from the Divine itself present within Him, the essential nature of His human - that owing to its heredity it was steeped in evil - the words 'Jehovah showed mercy to him' are used, meaning in the highest sense the presence of Divine Love within every single thing. Divine mercy (misericordia) is nothing else than Divine Love directed towards those trapped in misery (miseriae), 1099, 3063, 3875, that is, towards those undergoing temptations. For people who undergo temptations dwell in misery, and these primarily are meant in the Word by 'the wretched' (miseri).

5038. 'A place where the king's bound ones were bound' means the state of those governed by falsities. This is clear from the meaning of 'a place' as a state, dealt with in 2625, 2837, 3356, 3387, 4321, 4882; and from the meaning of 'the king's bound ones' as those who are governed by falsities and who, being governed by falsities, undergo vastation, and those who, while being regenerated in the world, undergo temptation. For temptation involves the laying waste of falsity and at the same time the consolidation of truth. The expression 'the king's bound ones' is used because 'a king' in the internal sense means truth, 1672, 1728, 2015, 2069, 3009, 3670, 4575, 4581, 4789, 4966, and therefore 'his bound ones' means those governed by falsity. The places where the king's bound ones were kept were also called 'pits', which was why Joseph said, in verse 15 of the next chapter,

By theft I have been taken out of the land of the Hebrews, and here also I have not done anything for which they should have put me in the pit.

As regards 'a pit' meaning a place of vastation, see 4728, 4744.