9219. 'For I am merciful' means that such help comes wholly from Him, out of mercy. This is clear from the meaning of 'being merciful', since it refers to the Lord, as the truth that help comes wholly from Him. The reason why out of mercy is meant is that everything done by the Lord is an act of mercy. The Lord in His Essential Being (Esse) is Divine Love; and love, when it is shown towards those in a state of wretchedness, is called mercy. Thus His Love as it is shown to the whole human race is called mercy; for the human race is set fast in a state of misery, since the human self or proprium is nothing but evil, 210, 215, 874-876, 987, 1581, 5660, 5786, 8480.

210. What is the proprium? The human proprium consists of everything evil and false that gushes out of self-love and love of the world. It involves people believing not in the Lord or in the Word but in themselves, and their imagining that what they do not grasp through sensory evidence or through facts does not exist at all. They become as a consequence nothing but evil and falsity and so have a warped view of everything. Things that are evil they see as good, and those that are good as evil; things that are false they see as true, and those that are true as false. Realities they imagine to be nothing, and things that are nothing they imagine to be everything. They call hatred love, thick darkness light, death life, and vice versa. In the Word such people are called 'the lame and the blind'. This then is the human proprium which in itself is hellish and condemned.