6226. 'And sat on the bed' means which was turned towards the natural. This is clear from the meaning of 'the bed' as the natural, dealt with in 6188. The reason why 'Israel sat on the bed' means that spiritual good was turned towards the natural is that in the last verse of the previous chapter, Chapter 47, 'Israel bowed himself over the head of the bed' meant that spiritual good turned itself towards things of the interior natural, see 6188, and therefore moving himself from the head and sitting on the bed means that spiritual good turned itself towards the natural. Nothing intelligible can be said to show what turning itself to the interior natural is, or to the exterior natural, because very few people know of the existence of the interior natural and the exterior natural, or that thought takes place at one time in the first, at another in the second. And people who do not know these things do not stop to reflect on them and consequently cannot have gained any knowledge of this particular matter by anything they have experienced. Yet this turning to one and then to the other goes on in everyone, though with variations; for at one time a person's thought is raised to things on a higher level, and at another it comes down to those on a lower level, so that at one time his thought looks upwards, at another time downwards.

[2] Apart from all this anyone can see that 'Israel bowed himself over the head of the bed' and that after that 'he sat on the bed' are matters which would have been too trivial for mention in the most holy Word unless they had held some arcanum within them. That arcanum cannot be brought to light except by means of the internal sense, except therefore through a knowledge of what each individual word means in the spiritual sense, that is, the sense that angels understand. For angels thoughts are not based, as men's are, on worldly, bodily, and earthly objects, but on heavenly ones. The nature of the difference between those two kinds of objects is particularly evident from correspondences, which are the subject at the ends of a number of chapters.

1843. That 'your seed will be strangers' means that charity and faith will be scarce is clear from the meaning of 'strange' and from the meaning of 'seed'. 'Strange' means not born in the land, thus not recognized as a native of it, and therefore looked upon as foreign. But 'seed' means charity and its attendant faith, as shown already in 255, 1025, and above at verse 3. Since that which is looked upon as foreign is called 'strange' and foreign describes what is not within the land or of the land, that which is scarce is consequently meant. The meaning here therefore is that charity and its attendant faith, meant by 'seed', will be scarce. It is the time just before the close - when there is 'great darkness', or falsities - that is the subject; at this time the seed will be 'strangers', that is, charity and faith, will be scarce.

[2] The fact that faith would be scarce in the last times was foretold by the Lord when He described the close of the age, in Matthew 24:4-end; Mark 13:3-end; Luke 21:7-end. Everything that is stated in these places implies that in those times charity and faith will be scarce, and that at length there will not be any at all. Something similar was foretold through John in the Book of Revelation, and also occurs many times in the Prophets, besides what appears in the historical sections of the Word.

[3] But by the faith that is going to perish in the last times nothing other than charity is meant. No other faith can possibly exist, except faith that is grounded in charity. The person who has no charity is incapable of possessing any faith at all, charity being the soil in which faith is implanted, its heart from which it derives its being and life. The ancients for this reason compared love and charity to the heart, and faith to the lungs, both of which lie inside the breast. That comparison is also a perfect simile; for to imagine a life of faith without charity is like imagining life from the lungs alone without the heart, which is an impossibility, as may become clear to anyone. The ancients therefore used to call all things that belonged to charity those of the heart, and all that belonged to faith devoid of charity those of the lips alone, that is, of the lungs passing by means of breath into speech. From this came the sayings of old about the need for goods and truths to go forth from the heart.