10332. 'To compose designs, to work in gold, and in silver, and in bronze' means in order to represent the interior and the exterior forms of good and truth that constitute an understanding animated by the will, thus that constitute faith springing from love. This is clear from the meaning of 'composing designs', or inventing devices, as that which is a product of the understanding, dealt with in 9598, 9688; from the meaning of 'working' as that which is a product of the will, dealt with in 9282, for what a person does is a product of his will, in this instance of the will operating through the understanding, since it says 'to compose designs, to work ...'; from the meaning of 'gold' as good, and of 'silver' as truth, dealt with in 1551, 1552, 5658, 6914, 6917, 8932, 9490, 9881, 9874; and from the meaning of 'bronze' as the good of the natural or external man, dealt with in 425, 1551. Consequently interior and exterior forms of good and truth are meant by 'gold, silver, and bronze', interior good by 'gold', interior and exterior truth by 'silver', and external good by 'bronze'. The reason why that which is representative of these forms of good and truth is what is meant is that the representative Church is the subject, and all the things that Bezalel was going to make were representative.

[2] From all this it is evident that 'to compose designs, to work in gold, in silver, and in bronze' means in order to represent interior and exterior forms of good and truth that constitute an understanding animated by the will. The reason why they are also those that constitute faith springing from love is that truths belong to faith, and truths have connection with the understanding, while forms of good belong to love, and forms of good have connection with the will. The expressions 'an understanding animated by the will' and 'faith springing from love' are used because the understanding is nothing at all unless it is animated by the will. For what a person understands but does not also will is not an understanding that is his own but that of another within him; and as a consequence that understanding fades away. But it is different when the understanding is animated by the will; it is then that of the person himself, because the will is the person himself. The like applies to the faith and love; for as has been stated, the truths of faith have connection with the understanding, and forms of the good of love with the will.

9283. 'And you shall not mention the name of other gods' means that they should not base their thinking on teachings that present what is false. This is clear from the meaning of 'the name' as everything belonging to religious teachings and everything belonging to worship in their entirety, dealt with in 2724, 3237, 6887, 8274, 8882, at this point everything belonging to teachings that present what is false since falsities are meant by 'other gods', 4544, 7873, 8867; and from the meaning of 'mentioning' as thinking. 'Mentioning' means thinking because mentioning is done by the mouth, and aspects of thought are meant by the utterances of the mouth. The reason for this is that a person's speech flows from his thought; for a person possesses thought which speaks and thought which does not speak. Thought which speaks is that which makes one with the words uttered. Thought which does not speak is that which makes one with the thought which does speak, and so with words that are uttered, in those who are honest and righteous, but not so in those who are dishonest or unrighteous. For thought which does not speak is a higher or more internal degree of understanding in a person, springing from his actual will. But thought which speaks is a lower or more external degree of understanding, formed from the higher or more internal in order to present or else feign before the world ideas of what is right and fair and ideas of what is good and true.

[2] All this demonstrates what the person who is honest and righteous is like and what the person who is dishonest or unrighteous is like. That is to say, it demonstrates that with the person who is honest and righteous the internal man has come to conform to an image of heaven, and the external man to an image of the world subordinated to heaven, 9279; but with the person who is dishonest or unrighteous the internal man has come to conform to an image of hell, and the external man to an image of heaven subordinated to hell, because he uses his external man to make a pretence of heavenly things, and employs rational concepts received from heaven to sanction evil cravings and also to deceive. From all this it is evident that opposite states of life exist with the righteous and the unrighteous.