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.

314. 18. For everywhere one finds a sequential order and a concurrent order, and the concurrent order evolves from the sequential order and in accordance with it. We cite this in explanation and corroboration of the preceding discussion.

People know the difference between a sequential arrangement and a concurrent one, but they do not know that any instance of concurrent order evolves from a sequential one and in accordance with it. It is at the same time very difficult to present to human perception how sequential elements project themselves into concurrent ones, and the kind of order they form there, since the learned do not have among them as yet any theory serving to explain the concept. So, because an initial idea of this secret cannot be conveyed in a few words, and to interject one at length here would distract people's minds from a more uncluttered view of conjugial love, the following may suffice to illustrate the matter. These brief observations concerning the two kinds of order, sequential and concurrent, and the influx of the first into the second, were presented in The Doctrine of the New Jerusalem Regarding the Sacred Scripture, which we repeat from there: ¹

[2] Everywhere in heaven and in the world we find a sequential order and a concurrent order. In sequential order one thing...follows after another from the highest elements to the lowest. In concurrent order, however, one thing exists alongside another from the inmost elements to the outmost. Sequential order is like a column with descending levels from top to bottom, while concurrent order is like a continuous piece of work...from center to surface....

...sequential order becomes concurrent in its concluding element...in the following way. The highest elements in the sequential order become the inmost elements of the concurrent order; and the lowest elements in the sequential order become the outmost elements of the concurrent order. It may be likened to a column with descending levels sinking down to become a continuous mass on the same plane.

That is how a concurrent arrangement is formed from sequential elements; and this in each and every thing of the spiritual world, and in each and every thing of the natural world.

See in that work nos. 38, 65; and still more on the same subject in Angelic Wisdom Regarding Divine Love and Wisdom, nos. 205-229.

[3] It is similar with the sequential progression leading to marriage, and the concurrent set of elements in marriage; namely, that the latter results from the former and in accordance with it.

(One who is acquainted with the way sequential order flows into a concurrent one can understand why it is that angels are able to see all the thoughts and intentions of a person's mind in his hand. ² And also that wives sense their husband's affections from the touch of the husbands' hands upon their breasts - a phenomenon that has been mentioned several times in the narrative accounts. ³ The reason is that the hands are a person's terminal parts, into which the deliberations and resolutions of his mind are directed and where they form a concomitant presence. That too is why we find it said in the Word that this or that was written on the hands. ⁴ )

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