35. 28 shows that the Old Testament prophets represented the Lord in respect to the Word and therefore meant the teaching of the church drawn from the Word, and that because of this they were addressed as “children of humanity.” It follows from this that by the various things they suffered and endured they represented the violence done to the literal meaning of the Word by Jews. Isaiah, for example, took the sackcloth off his waist and the sandals off his feet and went naked and barefoot for three years (Isaiah 20:2-3). Similarly, Ezekiel the prophet took a barber’s razor to his head and his beard, burned a third of the hair in the middle of the city, struck a third with a sword, and scattered a third to the wind; also, he bound a few hairs in his hems and eventually threw a few into the midst of a fire and burned them (Ezekiel 5:1-4).

Since the prophets represented the Word and therefore meant the teaching of the church drawn from the Word (as just noted), and since the head means wisdom from the Word, the hair and the beard mean the outermost form of truth. It is because of this meaning that inflicting baldness on yourself was a sign of immense grief and being discovered to be bald was an immense disgrace. This and this alone is why the prophet shaved off his hair and his beard - to represent the state of the Jewish church in regard to the Word. This and this alone is why two she-bears tore apart forty-two boys who called Elisha bald (2 Kings 2:23-25)-because as just noted the prophet represented the Word, and his baldness signified the Word without an outermost meaning.

We shall see in §49 below that the Nazirites represented the Lord’s Word in its outermost forms, which is why they were commanded to let their hair grow and not to shave any of it. In Hebrew, “Nazirite” actually means “hair.” It was commanded also that the high priest was not to shave his head (Leviticus 21:10) and that the fathers of their families as well were not to do so (Leviticus 21:5).

That is why they regarded baldness as such an immense disgrace, as we can tell from the following passages:

There will be baldness upon all heads, and every beard will be cut off. (Isaiah 15:2; Jeremiah 48:37)

There will be shame upon all faces and baldness on all heads. (Ezekiel 7:18)

Every head was made bald and every shoulder hairless. (Ezekiel 29:18)

I will put sackcloth around all waists and baldness upon every head. (Amos 8:10)

Make yourself bald and cut off your hair because of your precious children; make yourself still more bald, because they have left you and gone into exile. (Micah 1:16)

Here making yourself bald and making yourself still more bald means distorting truths of the Word in its outermost forms. Once they have been distorted, as was done by Jews, the whole Word is ruined, because the outermost forms of the Word are what it rests on and what holds it up. In fact, every word in it is a base and support for the Word’s heavenly and spiritual truths.

Since a head of hair means truth in its outermost forms, in the spiritual world everyone who trivializes the Word and distorts its literal meaning looks bald; but those who respect and love it have good-looking hair. On this, see §49 below.

438. They had tails like scorpions. (9:10) This symbolizes the Word's truths falsified, by which they induce a mental numbness.

A tail symbolizes the last extension of the head, because the brain extends through the spinal column into the tail. Consequently the head and the tail are united as their first and last elements. Consequently, when the head symbolizes a justifying and saving faith alone, the tail symbolizes in summary all its proofs, and as these are taken from the Word, it symbolizes the Word's truths falsified.

Everyone who assumes some principle of religion on the basis of on his own intelligence and puts it at the head of the rest, also takes proof passages from the Word and puts them at the tail, thus inducing a mental numbness in others and so doing them injury. That is why we are told that "they had tails like scorpions," and next, that "there were stings in their tails," and that "their power was to hurt men." For a scorpion symbolizes a persuasiveness that induces a numbness in the intellect (no. 425).

To be assured that the tail is an extension of the brain through the spinal column to its final point, ask any anatomist and he will tell you. Or look at a dog or some other fierce animal that has a tail, and if you treat it kindly and make yourself agreeable to it, you will see its stiffened back soften and its tail move in a corresponding manner. But on the other hand, if you annoy it, its backbone stiffens.

[2] The primary tenet of the intellect that is assumed as a principle is symbolized by the head, and its final expression by the tail, also in the following passages:

...He will cut off head and tail from Israel... The elder and honorable man is the head; but the prophet who teaches lies is the tail. (Isaiah 9:14-15)

There will not be any work for Egypt that the head or tail... may do. (Isaiah 19:15)

Nothing else is symbolized by the dragon's seven heads and the tail by which it drew a third of the stars of heaven and threw them to the earth, in Revelation 12:3-4; and also by the tails like serpents, having heads, with which they do harm, in verse 19 of this chapter.

Since the tail symbolizes the final element, and the final element embraces all the rest, therefore Jehovah said to Moses,

"...take (the serpent) by the tail." And he... caught it, and it became a rod... (Exodus 4:3-4)

The priests were also commanded therefore to remove the whole tail close to the backbone and to sacrifice it with the fat on the entrails, the kidneys, the intestines, and the liver (Leviticus 3:9-11; 8:25; 9:19, Exodus 29:22).

To be shown that the final element contains and embraces all the prior ones, see The Doctrine of the New Jerusalem Regarding the Sacred Scripture, nos. 38 65, and Angelic Wisdom Regarding Divine Love and Wisdom, nos. 209-216 217-222.