5323. 'And they cried out before him, Abrek!' means acknowledgement coming through faith, and homage. This is clear from the meaning of 'crying out' as acknowledgement coming through faith, dealt with below, and from the meaning of 'Abrek!' as homage, because Abrek in the original language means 'bend your knees', and the bending of knees is homage. For every inward impulse of a person's will, thus of his love and affection, and consequently of his life, has corresponding outward actions and gestures. Those actions and gestures flow from the actual correspondence of exterior things with interior ones. Holy fear that leads to humility, and from this to homage, has corresponding actions or gestures, which are bending the knees, falling forward on the knees, and also prostration of the body flat on the ground. If in that state homage is a product of genuine humility, and if humility is the product of genuine holy fear, there is an absence of spirits, which leads to a falling downwards of the joints at the border or intermediate area where the spiritual is joined to the natural, and so where the knees are. For the parts below the knee correspond to natural things, while the parts above the knee correspond to spiritual ones. These are the reasons why bending the knees is a sign representative of homage. Among celestial people this action comes quite spontaneously, but in the case of spiritual people it is a deliberate act of their will.

[2] In former times people bent their knees before kings when they rode by in a chariot. They bent them because kings represented the Lord's Divine Truth, while 'a chariot' meant His Word. This customary act of homage came into being when people knew what was represented by it, at which time kings did not think that such homage was paid to themselves but to their kingly authority, which was distinct from yet invested in their own persons. That authority invested in them was the law, and because this law had its origin in Divine Truth, it was the law invested in the person of the king, inasmuch as he was the guardian of the law, to which homage had to be paid. Thus a king did not attribute any royal authority to himself other than guardianship of the law. Insofar as he relinquished that guardianship he relinquished his royal authority; for he knew that homage arising from any other source than the law, that is, any other homage than that paid to the law itself, was idolatry. By royal authority is meant Divine Truth - see 1672, 1728, 2015, 2069, 3009, 3670, 4581, 4966, 5044, 5068 - and therefore that authority is the law, which essentially is truth reigning in that kingdom, in accordance with which its inhabitants conduct their lives. From all this it may be seen that 'Abrek!' or 'bend your knees' means homage.

[3] Since 'a cry' is in a similar way an action which corresponds to a living confession or an acknowledgement that is a product of faith, crying out was also the custom followed by the ancients when an outward sign of such confession or acknowledgement needed to be made. The expression 'crying out' is therefore used in various places in the Word when confession and acknowledgement that are the product of faith are referred to, as in the description involving John the Baptist in John,

He bore witness to Jesus and he cried out, saying, This was He of whom I spoke, He who, though coming after me, was before me, for He was before me. I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness, Make straight the way of the Lord. John 1:15, 23.

In the same gospel,

They took branches of palm trees, and went to meet Jesus, and cried, Hosanna! Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord, the King of Israel! John 12:13.

In Luke,

Jesus said to the Pharisees that if [the disciples] kept silent, the stones would cry out. Luke 19:40.

Because 'crying out' meant an acknowledgement that was the product of faith and consequently acceptance rising out of the acknowledgement, one therefore reads several times of the Lord's crying out, as in John 7:28, 37; 12:44-45. Also in Isaiah,

Jehovah will go forth as a Mighty Man, as a Man of Wars He will arouse zeal; He will shout aloud, and also will cry out. Isaiah 42:13.

In the contrary sense 'crying out' means lack of acknowledgement and so aversion, see 5016, 5018, 5027. This usage has reference to falsity, 2240.