432. Verse 5. Of the tribe of Judah were sealed twelve thousand. Of the tribe of Reuben were sealed twelve thousand. Of the tribe of Gad were sealed twelve thousand.

"Of the tribe of Judah were sealed twelve thousand," signifies love to the Lord, and that all who are in that love are in heaven, and come into heaven. "Of the tribe of Reuben were sealed twelve thousand," signifies the light of truth from that good, and that all who are in that light are in heaven, and come into heaven. "Of the tribe of Gad were sealed twelve thousand," signifies the good of life thence.

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).

6640. 'Reuben, Simeon, Levi, and Judah; Issachar, Zebulun, and Benjamin; Dan and Naphtali, Cad and Asher' means the whole process from start to finish, that is to say, of the establishment of the Church, which is the subject in what follows next. For the twelve sons of Jacob, and the tribes named after them too, mean all aspects of goodness and truth, that is, all aspects of love and faith in their entirety, see 3858, 3926, 3939, 4060, 6335. Yet these meanings vary according to the order in which the names are mentioned, 3862, 3926, 3939, 4603 and following paragraphs. The variations are therefore countless and involve every single thing that constitutes the Church and the Lord's kingdom, 6737. But what the specific meaning is when the names occur in the present or any other order nobody knows but the Lord alone. Nor does anyone in heaven know unless the Lord makes it known; in heaven the truths and forms of good that are meant are presented visually by means of lights, together with a perception of what the lights mean.

[2] The twelve tribes represented the Lord's kingdom and everything there, and therefore in order that those lights might also be represented, and thereby all the Church's truths and forms of good, twelve precious stones were set ¹ in gold in their proper order, one stone for each tribe. This was called the breastplate and was attached to Aaron's ephod; and they received answers from it by means of the varying flashes of light, which were accompanied either by audible words or by inner perception. From this too it may be recognized that the twelve tribes of Israel mean all the truths and forms of good, in their entirety, of the Lord's kingdom and the Church, and that the meanings vary, depending on the order in which they are mentioned. Here they are mentioned in a different order from that in which they were born, as is evident from the fact that Issachar and Zebulun are mentioned before Dan and Naphtali, though the latter were born before the former. Benjamin too is mentioned before Dan, Naphtali, Gad, and Asher, and yet he was born last; and Gad and Asher are mentioned last of all. Something similar is evident in other places in the Word where the names occur in further variations of order.

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