A congregation is a group of people with common loves, interests, and purposes. It often refers to a church group. In the Word it is almost always used to speak of the whole group of the Children of Israel, as the tabernacle of the congregation, or the people of the congregation. Sometimes the original Hebrew is translated as assembly, too. This is a case where readers and translators need to be aware of the context and potential nuances of meaning. Swedenborg writes that,'The congregation of the people' stands for people who are ruled by truths constituting intelligence, since 'congregation' is used with reference to truths... as also is 'people'... 'the assembly of the old' stands for people who are ruled by good. The usage of the term congregation also implies an ordering, or arrangement of truths.

(Odkazy: Apocalypse Explained 417; Arcana Coelestia 6338, 7843, 7891; The Apocalypse Explained 724 [17])

8609. 'And they took a stone' means the lowest level of God's truth. This is clear from the meaning of 'a stone' as truth, 643, 1298, 3720, 3769, 3771, 3789, 3798, 6426, in this instance the lowest level of truth since it was put underneath him and he sat on it. An ordinary stone furthermore means a lower level of truth, while a precious stone means a higher or more internal level of truth. What the lowest level of truth is becomes clear from what has been stated above in 8603 about the levels of truth that follow one another in order; that is to say, there are interior truths and exterior truths, the lowest of which are meant by the lowest level of truth.