2634. 'As God had commanded' means according to Divine order. This is clear from the meaning of 'God commending' or of commandments. God's commandments, or the things which God has commanded, constitute Divine order wholly and in every single detail, so much so that Divine order is nothing else than the everlasting commandment of God. Consequently living according to God's commandments and within God's commandments is doing so according to Divine order and within Divine order. Hence the phrase used here - 'God commanded' - means according to Divine order. It was according to Divine order that every male should be circumcised on the eighth day after he had been born. It was not that circumcision in itself would accomplish anything or that those who had been circumcised would enter the kingdom of God before the uncircumcised did; but it was according to Divine order because such a religious practice in the representative Church corresponded to purification of the heart - which correspondence will in the Lord's Divine mercy be spoken of elsewhere. It is according to Divine order that the heart, that is, a person interiorly, should be purified gradually and constantly from the evils present in his desires and from the falsities present in the delusions resulting from those desires. Commandments concerning the purification of the heart constitute Divine order wholly and in every single detail. To the extent therefore that a person is living within those commandments he lives within Divine order; and to the extent he is living within Divine order, all that resides with him is arranged by the Lord according to the order, originating in Him, which exists in the heavens. That is to say, both the person's rational concepts and his factual knowledge are so arranged by Him. In this way a person becomes a miniature heaven corresponding to the larger one.