[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.