5800. 'My lord questioned his servants, saying' means perception of their thought. This is clear from the meaning of 'questioning' as perceiving another's thought, dealt with in 5597. The reason 'questioning' has this meaning is that in the spiritual world or heaven no one needs to ask another what he thinks about the kinds of things for which he - that other person - has an affection, because in that world one person can perceive the thought that flows from another's affection. Furthermore the internal represented by 'Joseph' does not question the external, which 'Jacob's sons' represent, since the external receives its entire existence from the internal. From this too it is evident that 'questioning' means the perception of their thought. Also, the Word refers in various places to Jehovah questioning a person, when in fact He knows every single thought in that person. But such references are made to Him because people cannot help believing that their thoughts, being inside them, cannot be known to anyone. This appearance and consequent belief explain why questioning takes place.

6589. 'And cause you to go up out of this land to the land which He swore to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob' means that they are about to come into the state of the Church that the ancients lived in. This is clear from the meaning of 'the land of Egypt', from which they were to go up, as the Church when it has been laid waste - the Church laid waste was represented by the Egyptians through their oppression of the children of Israel, and the perishing of it through their drowning in the Sea Suph; and from the meaning of 'the land of Canaan', to which the children of Israel were about to go up, as the Lord's kingdom and the Church, dealt within 1607, 3038, 3481, 3705, 4447, 4517.

[2] The Ancient Church, or the state of the Church in which the ancients lived, is what is meant by God's having sworn to give that land to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. These three are used to mean in the highest sense the Lord, and in the representative sense His kingdom in heaven and His kingdom on earth, which is the Church, 1965, 1989, 2011, 3245, 3305 (end), 6098, 6185, 6276; therefore 'swearing the land to them' means confirming that they are about to come into the state of the Church that the ancients lived in. Not that the descendants of Jacob were about to do so, for they were incapable of coming into the state of that Church; they came into no more than the external aspect of that Church, that is to say, its representative acts, yet barely into these. The promise that is made refers instead to those who are meant spiritually by 'the children of Israel', that is, who are all members of the spiritual Church - both those who lived in it at that time and those who were about to come into it.

[3] 'Swearing' means confirmation from the Divine, see 1842, 3375.

The land of Canaan was promised and given to the descendants of Jacob so that they might represent the Church; and the reason for this was that the Church had existed in that land since ancient times, during which all the places there received their names and became representative, see 3686, 4447, 4516, 4517, 5136, 6516.