jehovah
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...
summer
Summer' signifies the full state of the church, the same as 'noon.'
seeing
The symbolic meaning of "seeing" is "understanding," which is obvious enough that it has become part of common language (think about it; you might see...
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...
howled
To howl' signifies grief caused by vastation.
day
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...
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...
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...
Poor
The poor, maimed, lame, and blind,' as in Luke 14:21, signify the uninstructed Gentiles who were in lives of good.
land
'Lands' of different nations are used in the Word to signify the different kinds of love prevalent in the inhabitants.
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.
ephah
The Bible uses a somewhat dizzying array of unfamiliar measurement, leaving translators a choice between being accurate and confusing or inaccurate and clear. Since they...
shekel
'A shekel' signifies the price or estimation of good and truth, and 'half a shekel' signifies the determination of the quantity thereof.
balances
The balances mentioned in Revelation 6:5 signify the estimation of goodness and truth.
deceit
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...
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,...
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...
mourned
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....
sunk
The spiritual meaning of "sink" is relatively easy to see: It means to descend into lower spiritual states, especially into states where false reasoning and...
egypt
'Mizraim' signifies the same thing as Egypt.
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...
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...
noon
'Noon' signifies the full state of the church. 'Noon' signifies wisdom in its most luminous state. 'Noon' denotes a state of light, because the times...
a day
"Day" describes a state in which we are turned toward the Lord, and are receiving light (which is truth) and heat (which is a desire...
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...
turned
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.
Loins
'Loins' in general, signify love, and when referring to the Lord, divine love. 'Loins' signify the interiors of conjugial love. Loins,' as in Isaiah 11:5,...
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....
baldness
'A bald head' signifies the Word deprived of the natural sense, which is the sense of the letter.
Coming
Coming (Gen. 41:14) denotes communication by influx.
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...
sent
'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...
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...
seek
The meaning of "to seek" in the Bible is pretty straightforward, but there is a bit of nuance: Swedenborg tells us that in most cases...
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...
Find
To not to be found any more, signifies not to rise again.
Samaria
'The woman of Samaria' signifies the church which would be founded among the Gentiles.
said
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...
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...
fallen
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...
rise
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...
