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).