Jerusalem, on Mount Zion, signifies the doctrine of love to the Lord, and how it governs your life. Jerusalem first comes to our attention in 2 Samuel 5, when King David takes the city from the Jebusites and makes it his capital. In the next chapter he brings the Ark of the Covenant there, and later it is where Solomon builds the temple, and his own palace. From then on Jerusalem is the center of worship of the Israelitish church. It is the place where the Lord was presented in the temple as a baby, where He tarried to talk to the priests at age twelve, where He cleansed the temple, had the last supper, was crucified and then rose. It is a central place in both the old and new Testaments. The city was built on Mount Zion, the highest point of the mountains of Judea. A city, in the Word, represents doctrine, the organized knowledge of the truths of the church. Mountains represent love of the Lord and the consequent worship. If you put those things together, Jerusalem on Mount Zion signifies the doctrine of love to the Lord, and how it governs your life. This is why David was led to make Jerusalem the most important city of the land, and why all worship was conducted there. And this is also why Jeroboam was condemned for introducing idol worship in Samaria. In the Book of Revelation, John's vision of the city New Jerusalem descending from God is a prophecy of a new dispensation of doctrine coming from the Lord.

(Odkazy: Arcana Coelestia 4539, 8938; The Apocalypse Explained 365 [35-38])

4675. 'And Israel loved Joseph more than all his sons' means a joining of the Divine Spiritual of the Rational to the Divine Spiritual of the Natural. This is clear from the representation of Jacob, when he is called 'Israel', as the Divine Spiritual of the Natural, or the celestial manifestation of the spiritual from the natural, dealt with in 4286, 4598; from the representation of 'Joseph' as the Divine Spiritual of the Rational, or the celestial manifestation of the spiritual from the rational, dealt with in 4286, 4592; and from the meaning of 'loving' as being joined together, for love is a joining together spiritually. From all this it is evident that 'Israel loved Joseph' means a joining of the Divine Spiritual of the Rational to the Divine Spiritual of the Natural. That joining together being referred to here, Jacob is not called Jacob at this point, as he is above in verses 1 and 2, but 'Israel'. From this change of name too one may conclude that the internal sense here contains a specific arcanum. But the exact nature of that joining together - of the Divine Spiritual of the Rational to the Divine Spiritual of the Natural - cannot as yet be explained because it is not the subject in the present chapter but in those that follow, where it is going to be explained as far as it is possible to do so. Only this need be mentioned here, that the expression spiritual is used both of the rational and of the natural, for the spiritual is Divine Truth received from the Lord, which is called the spiritual of the rational when it shines within the rational or the internal man, and the spiritual of the natural when it shines from there within the natural or the external man.