146. To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the hidden manna. That this signifies that to those who conquer in temptations will be given the delight of heavenly love from the Divine Human of the Lord is evident from the signification of him that overcometh, as being those who conquer in temptations; for such are treated of in what is written to the angel of this church (as may be seen above, n. 130); also from the signification of I will give to eat, as being to be appropriated and conjoined by love and charity (concerning which see Arcana Coelestia 2187, 2343, 3168, 3513, 5643), and because it is said concerning the hidden manna, by which is meant the Lord as to the Divine Human; by eating thereof, is here signified the delight of heavenly love, for this is appropriated from the Divine Human of the Lord by those who receive Him in love and faith; and from the signification of the hidden manna, as being the Lord as to the Divine Human.

That this is what is meant by manna is evident from the words of the Lord Himself in John:

"Our fathers did eat manna in the desert, as it is written, He gave them bread from heaven to eat. The bread of God is he who cometh down from heaven, and giveth life unto the world. I am the bread of life. Your fathers did eat manna in the desert and are dead. This is that bread which cometh down from heaven, that he that eateth of it may not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven, if any man eat of this bread he shall live for ever. The bread that I will give is my flesh" (6:31-58).

That it is the Lord Himself who is meant by manna and by bread, He plainly teaches, for He says, "I am the bread of life that came down from heaven." That it is the Lord as to the Divine Human, He also teaches when He says, "The bread which I will give is my flesh."

[2] The Lord taught the same when He instituted the holy supper:

"Jesus took bread, and blessed, and gave it to the disciples, and said, Take, eat, this is my body" (Matthew 26:26; Mark 14:22; Luke 22:19).

To eat of this bread is to be conjoined to Him by love, for to eat signifies to appropriate and be conjoined, as said above; and love is spiritual conjunction. The same thing is signified by eating in the kingdom of God, in Luke:

"Blessed is he that eateth bread in the kingdom of God" (14:15).

Again:

"Ye shall eat and drink at my table in the kingdom of God" (22:30).

In Matthew:

"Many shall come from the east and west, and shall recline with Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom" of God (8:11).

(That by Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, is meant the Lord, may be seen, Arcana Coelestia 1893, 4615, 6098, 6185, 6276, 6804, 6847.)

And in John:

"Labour not for the meat which perisheth, but for that meat which endureth unto everlasting life, which the Son of man will give unto you" (6:27).

[3] (That the Son of man is the Lord as to the Divine Human, may be seen above, n. 63.) The reason why it is called hidden manna is, because the delight of heavenly love, which those receive who are conjoined to the Lord by love is quite unknown to those who are not in heavenly love; and this delight no one can receive but he who acknowledges the Divine Human of the Lord; for it proceeds from this. Because this delight was unknown to the sons of Israel in the desert, they therefore called it manna, as is evident in Moses:

"Jehovah said unto Moses, Behold, I will rain bread from heaven for you. And in the morning the dew lay round about the camp. And when the dew that lay was gone up, behold, upon the face of the desert there lay a small round thing; and when they saw it, they said, It is manna (What is this?). Moses said unto them, This is the bread which Jehovah hath given you to eat. And the house of Israel called the name thereof manna" (Exodus 16:3 to the end).

"Jehovah fed thee with manna which thou knewest not, neither did thy fathers know; that he might make thee know that man doth not live by bread only, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of Jehovah doth man live" (Deuteronomy 8:3).

The reason why this delight, which is meant by manna, was unknown to the sons of Israel was, that they were in bodily delight more than other nations; and those who are in this delight cannot know anything at all of heavenly delight. (That the sons of Israel were of such a character may be seen in The Doctrine of the New Jerusalem 248.) It is called delight, and by this is meant the delight of love; for all the delight of life is from love.

[4] Because it is the delight of heavenly love that is signified by eating of the hidden manna, it is therefore called the bread of the heavens in David:

"Jehovah commanded the clouds from above, and opened the doors of the heavens; and rained down manna upon them to eat, and gave them of the corn of the heavens" (Psalm 78:23, 24).

And in another place:

"Jehovah satisfied them with the bread of the heavens" (Psalm 105:40).

It is called the bread of the heavens because it rained down from heaven with the dew, but in the spiritual sense it is called the bread of the heavens because it flows down from the Lord through the angelic heaven; in this sense, no other heaven is meant, and no other bread than that which nourishes the soul of man. That bread is here meant in this sense is evident from the words of the Lord himself in John, where He says, that

He is the manna or bread which came down from heaven (John 6:31-58).

And in Moses, where it is said

that Jehovah fed them with manna that He might teach that man doth not live by bread alone, but by every utterance of the mouth of Jehovah (Deuteronomy 8:3).

The utterance of the mouth of Jehovah is everything that proceeds from the Lord, and this, specifically, is Divine truth united with Divine good (as may be seen in the work, Heaven and Hell 13, 133, 139, 140, 284-290).

[5] This delight is also described by correspondences in Moses:

The manna was "like coriander seed, white, and the taste of it was like a cake made with honey" (Exodus 16:31).

And in another place:

"They made cakes of it; and the taste of it was as of the juice of oil" (Numbers 11:7, 8).

The reason why the manna had such an appearance and taste was, that the white seed of coriander signifies truth from a celestial origin, a cake the good of celestial love, honey its external delight, oil that love itself, and its juice, whence was the taste, its internal delight, and the rain with the dew, in which the manna was, the influx of Divine truth in which that delight is contained. (That seed signifies truth from a heavenly origin, may be seen, Arcana Coelestia 3038, 3373, 10248, 10249: that white is said of that truth, n. 3301, 3993, 4007, 5319; that cake signifies the good of heavenly love, n. 7978, 9992, 9993; that oil signifies that love itself, n. 886, 3728, 9780, 9954, 10261, 10269; hence its juice signifies its delight, because the taste is therefrom and the taste is the delight and pleasantness, see n. 3502, 4791-4805. But more may be seen concerning these things in the explanation of chapter 16 of Exodus in Arcana Coelestia.) The reason why the delight of celestial love is signified by eating of the hidden manna, although by the hidden manna the Lord as to the Divine Human is signified, is that it is the same thing whether we say the Divine Human of the Lord, or the Divine love, for the Lord is Divine love itself, and what proceeds from Him is Divine good united to Divine truth; both belong to love, and are also the Lord in heaven. Therefore to eat of Him is to be conjoined to Him, and this is effected by love from Him. (But these things may be better understood from what is said and shown in the work, Heaven and Hell 13-19, 116-125, 126-140; and also in The Doctrine of the New Jerusalem 210-222 and 307.)

2520. 'And he said, Lord, will You kill even a righteous nation?' means, Would the good and truth of doctrine be done away with? This is clear from the meaning of 'nation' as good, dealt with in 1259, 1260, 1416. And because the words 'a righteous nation' refer to 'the nation of Abimelech', who means the doctrine of faith, they are used here to mean both good and truth, since both are the subject matter of doctrine.

[2] The fact that these words were uttered from a zeal that went with an affection or love towards the whole human race may be evident to anyone. Such love was directing the Lord's thoughts even when He had not yet put off the human from the mother. And although He perceived from the Divine that the doctrine of faith had a wholly celestial origin, nevertheless in order that the needs of the human race, which does not receive anything of which it cannot form some idea from its own rational thought, might be met, it is therefore said, 'Will You kill even a righteous nation?' meaning, Would the good and truth of doctrine be done away with? The fact that a person does not receive anything of which he cannot form some idea from his rational thought may be seen from the ideas which a person entertains regarding Divine arcana. The latter always have some idea attached to them that is derived from worldly objects or things analogous to worldly objects by which they are retained in the memory and reproduced in thought. For without ideas derived from worldly objects a person is unable to engage in thought. If therefore truths from a Divine origin were presented naked they would never be accepted because they would go far beyond his range of understanding, and so beyond his faith as well, most of all in the case of those whose worship is external.

[3] Let the following examples illustrate this: The Divine itself cannot reside in anything except that which is Divine, and so only in the Lord's Divine Human, and with man through His Human. If the rational were consulted it would say that the Divine itself can reside in the human of anyone. Again nothing holy exists which does not proceed from the Lord, and so from the Divine, which is one. If the rational were consulted it would say that what is holy may also spring from other sources.

[4] Again, man does not live from himself, do good from himself, believe the truth from himself, or indeed think from himself. The good and truth that he does or believes come from the Lord, but the evil and falsity come from hell. And what is more, hell - that is, those who are in hell - do not think from themselves but, in the same way as man, are recipients of the Lord's good and truth. If the rational were consulted it would reject all those ideas because it would not comprehend them. It would also reject the idea that nobody is rewarded on account of the good he does and of the truth he teaches. And it would reject the idea that what is external does not accomplish anything, only what is internal, insofar as the affection for good is present in the doing of good, and insofar as from this the affection for truth is present in the teaching of truth, and insofar as the things are not done from oneself. So also with a thousand other examples that could be given.

[5] Such being the nature of the human rational, the Word therefore uses expressions that accord with man's capacity to understand, and also with his inherent disposition. And this explains why the internal sense of the Word is different from its literal sense. This becomes quite clear from the Old Testament Word where most things are stated in ways that accord with the capacity to understand and the inherent disposition of the people who lived in those times. As a consequence little, indeed scarcely anything, is mentioned there about the life after death, about eternal salvation, and about the internal man. Indeed the character of the Jewish and Israelitish people with whom the Church existed at that time was such that if these matters had been disclosed to them they would not only have failed to understand them but would also have ridiculed them. If similarly it had been disclosed to them that the Messiah or Christ was going to come and save their souls for ever, this too they would have rejected as something of no importance, as also becomes clear from the same nation today. And it is so still that if what is internal or spiritual is mentioned in their presence, and the fact that the Messiah is not going to be a very great earthly king, they laugh at it.

[6] This was the reason why the Lord sometimes spoke in the way the Prophets had spoken and expressed all else by means of parables, as He Himself states in Matthew,

Jesus said, I speak to them in parables, because those who see do not see, and those who hear do not hear, nor do they understand. Matthew 13:13.

'Those who see' and 'those who hear' are those inside the Church who, though they see and hear, nevertheless do not understand. And in John,

He has blinded their eyes and hardened their heart, lest they see with their eyes and understand with their heart, and are converted and I heal them. John 12:40.

Their being 'converted' and being 'healed' implies that even so they would subsequently reject and in so doing profane, which entails eternal condemnation, see 301-303, 582, 1008, 1010, 1059, 1327, 1328, 2051, 2426. Nevertheless the Lord in many places disclosed the interior things of the Word, but solely for the benefit of the wise.