771. Vers. 18:11. Et les marchands de la terre pleureront et seront dans le deuil à cause d'elle, de ce que leurs marchandises personne n'achète plus, signifie les inférieurs dans l'ordre hiérarchique, qui font le service et s'enrichissent au moyen des choses saintes ; ici, leurs douleurs de ce que, après la destruction de Babylone, leurs choses religieuses sont reconnues, non pas pour saintes, mais pour des vrais et des biens adultérés et profanés de la Parole et par conséquent de l'Église, et qu'ainsi ils ne peuvent plus, comme auparavant, tirer profit de ces choses. Par les marchands sont entendus les inférieurs dans Tordre hiérarchique ecclésiastique, parce que par les Rois de la terre, dont il a été parlé jusqu'ici, sont entendus les supérieurs dans cet ordre ; voir ci-dessus, No. 767 ; ainsi, par les marchands de la terre sont entendus ceux qui font le service et s'enrichissent au moyen des choses saintes ; ils pleureront et seront dans le deuil sont signifiées leurs douleurs, de même que ci-dessus, No. 767 ; par leurs marchandises sont signifiées les choses saintes ou les choses religieuses par lesquelles ils tirent du profil ou du gain ; par ne plus les acheter, il est signifié ne pas vouloir les avoir, parce qu'elles sont, non pas des choses saintes, mais des vrais et des biens adultérés et profanés de la Parole et par conséquent de l'Église ; qu'acheter, ce soit acquérir pour soi, on le voit, No. 606. Il est parlé ainsi de ce sujet, dans Jérémie :

— « Babel, toi qui habites sur des eaux abondantes, grande en trésors ; elle est venue, la fin, la mesure de ion lucre. » — Jérémie 51:13.

Wine played a key role in the ancient world, where safe, reliable water sources were scarce. It could be stored for long periods of time; if lightly fermented it was rich in sugar content; it was high in mineral content; it tasted good and generally had intoxicating qualities. Thus it was a valuable commodity and treated with reverence.

Wine is, of course, made from grapes. Grapes – sweet, juicy, nutritious and full of energy-rich fructose – represent the Lord's own exquisite desire to be good to us. That's powerful stuff! But grapes have a short shelf life; you might eat a bunch for a burst of energy, but you can't exactly carry them around with you for long-term sustenance. And so it is with desires for good: They tend to come to us in energizing bursts, but fade away fairly quickly. We need something more stable and lasting.

At some point in the distant past people figured out that if you squeeze the juice from the grapes and let it ferment, the result is a liquid that offers that stability: wine. The spiritual meaning works the same way; if we examine our desires for good, try to understand and think about how to apply them, what we will get are concepts about what good really is, how to recognize it and how to make it happen. And just like the wine, these ideas offer stability and portability. For instance, finding a wallet full of cash on the sidewalk might severely test our desire to be honest, but the idea that "you shall not steal" is pretty hard to shake.

Wine, then, on the deepest level represents divine truth flowing from divine goodness – the true principles that arise from the fact that the Lord loves us and desires everything good for us.

Wine comes in many varieties, though, and is used in many ways. Depending on context it can represent truth that arises from a desire for good on much more mundane levels. You want your children to be healthy so you make them brush their teeth even though they complain and it's a pain in the neck; the truth that brushing their teeth is good for them is wine on a very day-to-day level.

In some cases wine can also actually represent good things that arise from true ideas, something of a reverse from its inmost meaning. This happens when we are in transitional stages, setting higher ideas and principles above our less-worthy desires in an effort to reshape our actions. In that case our principles are the things being squeezed, with good habits the result.

There is also, of course, a darker side to wine. There is a good deal of debate about just how much alcohol wine had in Biblical times, and some of it may indeed have been more like concentrated grape juice. But there are also many references to wine and drunkeness, so some of it, at least, was fairly potent.

On a spiritual level, getting drunk on wine represents relying too much on our ideas, taking logic to such an extreme that we forget the good things we were trying to achieve in the first place.

(Odkazy: Apocalypse Explained 376 [1-40], 1152; Apocalypse Revealed 316, 635; Arcana Coelestia 1071 [1-5], 1727, 3580 [1-4], 5117 [7], 6377, 10137 [1-10]; The Apocalypse Explained 329 [2-4]; The New Jerusalem and its Heavenly Doctrine 219)