The Lord, in His essence, is infinite. He is the source of all energy, the well-spring of reality itself. His love is of such power that we would be destroyed by its direct heat, which is infinitely greater than the heat of the finite sun. His wisdom, the direct outpouring of His love, is of such power that we would be blinded by its brightness, which is infinitely brighter than the light of the finite sun. His immensity – which is beyond immensity – is inaccessible to our finite imaginative powers. In His essence, He is unknowable to us.

Yet we know Him. How? The Writings say that His love and wisdom project as a human form, then pass through that form almost like a filter to come to us as divine truth. That truth is like a container that is conformed to our minds, enough that we can hang onto an idea of the Lord and receive His love. We can have ideas that are filled with the Lord, and feel like we know Him, though really what we know is just the amount we can handle.

That divine truth is, itself, "the only begotten son." It was the son as the soul within the physical man Jesus; it was the son as the inner meaning of the Old Testament; it was the son as expressed by the Lord in other ways before Moses, and it is still the son now as the inner meaning of the Old and New Testaments together. It knows the Father – the love that is the Lord’s essence – and does, in fact, declare the Father to us, if only we will listen.

(Izinkomba: Arcana Coelestia 2025 [4], 4211, 4724, 5321 [2], 6849, 6887, 7211, 8705, 10579)

4930. 'And he called his name Zerah' means the essential nature of it. This is clear from the meaning of 'calling the name' as the essential nature, as above in 4927. The essential nature meant by 'Zerah' is the nature of the reality which has been the subject in the internal sense up to this point, this reality being that in actual fact good is the firstborn but that truth appears to be such. That nature contains countless details, countless details such as cannot be seen in the light of the world, only in the light of heaven, and so by the eyes of the angels. If man could see the essential nature of a single reality like those visible to the angels he would be dumbfounded and would confess he would never have believed it, adding that compared with the angels he knew scarcely anything. In the original language Zerah means 'the rise' and is used to refer to the sun and the first sign of its light. This explains why this son was named Zerah, for good behaves in a similar way in the case of one who is being regenerated. Good first rises and sheds light, and from this light things within the natural man are lightened, enabling them to be seen, acknowledged, and finally believed. If light did not flow from the good present within that person he would never be able to see truths so that he could acknowledge and believe them. Instead he would see them as no more than the kind of things that have to be called truths for the common people's sake, or else as falsities.