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.

3348. Spirits from another planet were once present with me for quite a long while, during which time I told them about the wisdom of our world. I described to them how included among the branches of knowledge in which the reputation for being learned rests is that of analytics, by means of which men strive to examine closely the things that comprise the mind and its thoughts, and how they call this branch of knowledge metaphysics and logic, and yet they do not get very far beyond the use of terms or of a few general, yet variable, rules. I went on to describe how they argue over terms, asking for example, What is meant by a form, or by substance, or by the mind, or by the soul? And how by means of those variable general rules they engaged in acrimonious disputes over truths. Hearing all this those spirits from another planet perceived that such things remove all sense and understanding of a thing when people stick to terms and think about such by means of carefully constructed rules. They said that such terms and rules were merely little black clouds which blocked one's mental vision and lowered the understanding so to speak down into the dust. They added that it was not so among them, but that they had clearer ideas of things through having no knowledge at all of such terms and rules. I was also allowed to see how wise they were. They represented the human mind in a wonderful way as a heavenly form, and its affections as spheres of activity in keeping with that form. They effected this representation so deftly that the angels praised them for it. They also represented how the Lord bends those affections which are not in themselves delightful into those that are. Learned ones from our earth were present but they were unable to understand these representations in the slightest even though during their lifetime they had engaged in much philosophical discussion. When those from another planet perceived their thoughts and how they stuck solely to terms and were inclined to dispute the truth of every single thing they called such endeavours a froth full of dregs.