lord
The Lord, in the simplest terms, is love itself expressed as wisdom itself. In philosophic terms, love is the Lord's substance and wisdom is His...
the Lord
The Bible refers to the Lord in many different ways, which from the text seem indistinguishable and interchangeable. Understood in the internal sense, though, there...
come
Coming (Gen. 41:14) denotes communication by influx.
Israel
'Israel,' in Jeremiah 23:8, signifies the spiritual natural church. The children of Israel dispersed all the literal sense of the Word by falsities. 'The children...
pass
'To pass,' as in Genesis 31:52, signifies flowing in. 'To pass the night,' as in Genesis 24:54, signifies having peace. 'To pass through,' as in...
the temple
'Solomon's temple' represents heaven and the church.
temple
'A temple' represents heaven and the church. The sacred place where the ark was, represents the inmost, or third heaven, and the church among people...
saith
As with many common verbs, the meaning of “to say” in the Bible is highly dependent on context. Who is speaking? Who is hearing? What...
many
Intellectual things – ideas, knowledge, facts, even insight and understanding – are more separate and free-standing than emotional things, and it’s easier to imagine numbering...
place
'A room' or 'place' denotes state.
hear
'To hearken to father and mother,' as mentioned in Genesis 28:7, signifies obedience from affection. 'To hearken,' as mentioned in Genesis 30:22, signifies providence. See...
Poor
The poor, maimed, lame, and blind,' as in Luke 14:21, signify the uninstructed Gentiles who were in lives of good.
needy
In most cases, those described as "needy" in the Bible are those who lack true knowledge of the Lord and his teachings, but have a...
month
'A month' has respect to the state of truth in a person. 'A month' signifies a full state. Month,' as in Genesis 29, signifies the...
sabbath
In Exodus 31:13, 'verily my Sabbaths ye shall keep,' signifies continuous holy thought about the union of the Lord’s divine with His human.
Open
To open,' as in Revelation 9, signifies communication and conjunction.
measure
'To measure' signifies knowing and exploring the quality of something.
deceitful
The spiritual meaning of being deceitful is pretty close to the literal meaning: According to the Writings it means using false thinking and logic to...
balances
The balances mentioned in Revelation 6:5 signify the estimation of goodness and truth.
money
'Silver,' in the internal sense of the Word, signifies truth, but also falsity. 'Silver' means the truth of faith, or the truth acquired from selfhood,...
shoes
In the Word, 'the sole of the foot' and 'the heel' signifies the ultimate natural. 'The shoe' is what clothes the sole of the foot...
pride
'Pride' signifies the love of self.
Jacob
Jacob is told twice that his name will now be Israel. The first time is when he wrestles with an angel on his journey to...
Forget
To forget, in the internal sense, signifies nothing else but removal and apparent privation.
works
'Works,' as in Genesis 46:33, denote goods, because they are from the will, and anything from the will is either good or evil, but anything...
Every one
The phrase “Every one,” where it occurs in Genesis 20:7, signifies every thing or all things.
mourn
In a general sense, mourning in the Bible represents a state of grief over the lack of desires for good and true ideas about life....
rise up
It is common in the Bible for people to "rise up," and it would be easy to pass over the phrase as simply describing a...
river of Egypt
The Nile' or 'river of Egypt' represents the sensory things subject to the intellectual mind, and the scientific ideas which are derived from them. This...
egypt
'Mizraim' signifies the same thing as Egypt.
go
In the physical world, the places we inhabit and the distances between them are physical realities, and we have to get our physical bodies through...
sun
The 'sun' signifies celestial and spiritual love. The 'sun' in the Word, when referring to the Lord, signifies His divine love and wisdom. Because the...
earth
'Lands' of different nations are used in the Word to signify the different kinds of love prevalent in the inhabitants.
day of
'Day of vengeance' signifies a state of damnation.
light
Nov. 4, 1879: Thomas Edison filed a patent for a long-burning light bulb. Nov. 5, 1879: The light bulb was universally accepted as the symbol...
turn
Swedenborg says that the Lord is the sun of heaven, and like the natural sun of our world shines on everyone, good or evil. What...
songs
In the ancient and Jewish churches, 'songs' were prophesies about the Lord, especially His coming in the world, subjugation of the diabolical spirits, and liberation...
lamentation
The children of Israel represent 'lamentation' by various things which signified some evil of the church among them for which they were punished. When they...
sackcloth
'Being clothed in sackcloth' signifies lamentation because of the devastation of truth in the church. 'Sackcloth,' as in Revelation 6:12, relates to destroyed good.
baldness
'A bald head' signifies the Word deprived of the natural sense, which is the sense of the letter.
head
The head is the part of us that is highest, which means in a representative sense that it is what is closest to the Lord....
days
The expression 'even to this day' or 'today' sometimes appears in the Word, as in Genesis 19:37-38, 22:14, 26:33, 32:32, 35:20, and 47:26. In a...
send
'Being sent' everywhere signifies, in an internal sense, going forth, as in John 17:8. In similar manner, it is said of the holy of the...
bread
Just as natural food feeds the natural body, so spiritual food feeds the spiritual body. And since our spiritual body is the expression of what...
hearing
Thanks to modern science, we now understand that hearing actually happens in the brain, not the ears. The ears collect vibrations in the air and...
the Word
In general, we tend to be very aware of how knowing what's true leads to doing what is good. That starts as children, with parents...
word
'Word,' as in Psalms 119:6-17, stands for doctrine in general. 'The Word,' as in Psalms 147:18, signifies divine good united with divine truth. 'Word,' as...
Move
'To move' denotes living.
sea
'The sea and the waves roaring' means heresy and controversies in the church and individual.
north
'North' signifies people who are in obscurity regarding truth. North,' in Isaiah 14:31, signifies hell. The North,' as in Jeremiah 3:12, signifies people who are...
Find
To not to be found any more, signifies not to rise again.
swear
The Lord swearing by himself signifies that divine truth testifies, for He is divine truth itself, and this testifies from itself and means itself. It...
Samaria
'The woman of Samaria' signifies the church which would be founded among the Gentiles.
god
The Lord is love itself, expressed in the form of wisdom itself. Love, then, is His essence, His inmost. Wisdom - the loving understanding of...
dan
The tribe of Dan (Jer. 8:16) signifies truth in its own ultimate degree of order, here truth in the church, which is contained in the...
way
In John 14:6, 'the way is doctrine,' 'the truth' is every thing pertaining to doctrine, and 'the life' is the essential good which is the...
fall
Like other common verbs, the meaning of "fall" is highly dependent on context in regular language, and is highly dependent on context in a spiritual...
