620. Verse 10. And I took the little book out of the hand of the angel, and ate it up, signifies exploration. This is evident from the things that precede, namely, that "the little book" means the Word, "the angel" the Lord in relation to the Word, and "to devour or to eat it" means to receive, perceive, and appropriate to oneself, consequently to explore, here of what quality the understanding of the Word still is in the church. Exploration is effected by means of a thing's being perceived and the way in which it is perceived; it was effected with the prophet John, because a "prophet" signifies the doctrine of the church, and in a universal sense, the Word.

Father in the Word means what is most interior, and in those things that are following the Lord's order, it means what is good. In the highest sense Father means the Lord Himself, the creator. In the generation of natural children it is the father who provides the soul or the most interior receptacle of life, and an internal heredity, and the mother who provides all of the substance that the soul uses to form its body, plus an external heredity. In this process the soul comes from the Lord through the father, and not from the father, since all life is from the Lord. The wise person calls the Lord his father and the church his mother because his interior loves come from the Lord, but are given form and actuality through the truths taught by the church. Those things thus brought forth are a person's spiritual "children". In the New Testament, when speaking of Jesus and the Father, what is meant is the outward manifestation with the divine itself as the soul inside. Because Jesus was born from a natural mother, He had a natural body and a natural Jewish heredity. Throughout his life as He was tempted by the hells, He slowly put off all he had from His mother and replaced it with what He had from Himself inside, the Father. In doing this he made himself one with the Father that was His inmost so He could truly say, "I and my Father are one".