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.

46. And girded about the breasts with a golden girdle. This symbolizes the emanating and at the same time conjoining Divinity which is Divine good.

The golden girdle has this symbolism because the Lord's breast, and specifically the nipples there, symbolize His Divine love. Therefore the golden girdle which encircled them symbolizes the emanating and at the same time conjoining Divinity, which is the Divine goodness of Divine love. Gold, too, symbolizes goodness (see no. 913 below).

A girdle or sash in the Word symbolizes a common bond which holds everything in order and connection. For example, in Isaiah:

There shall come forth a rod from the stem of Jesse..., and righteousness shall be the girdle of His loins, and truth the girdle of His loins. (Isaiah 11:1, 5)

The rod coming forth from the stem of Jesse is the Lord.

It may be seen in Arcana Coelestia (The Secrets of Heaven), published in London, nos. 9837 and 9944, that the girdle of Aaron's ephod and the belt of his tunic symbolized conjunction.

Since a girdle symbolizes a bond conjoining the goods and truths of the church, therefore when the church with the children of Israel was destroyed, Jeremiah the prophet was commanded to buy himself a sash and put it on his loins, and then hide it in a hole in a rock by the Euphrates. And when, at the end of many days, he recovered it, behold, it was ruined and profitable for nothing. (Jeremiah 13:1-12) This represented that the goodness of the church had then come to nothing, with its truths therefore gone.

A sash has the same symbolic meaning in Isaiah 3:24, in the phrase, "instead of a sash, a rent." And so also elsewhere.

That nipples or paps symbolize Divine love is apparent from passages in the Word where they are mentioned, and from their correspondence with love.