9472. 'And pieces of shittim wood' means good deeds worthy of merit that proceed from the Lord, and so are the Lord's alone. This is clear from the meaning of 'pieces of wood' as the good of merit, dealt with in 1110, 2784, 2812, 4943, 8740. The good of merit is good proceeding from the Lord's Divine Human, which is Christian good, or spiritual good present with a person. This good is the one by means of which a person is saved; for good which proceeds from any other source is not good since it has nothing of God in it, nor thus of heaven, nor therefore any health or salvation in it. Shittim wood was the wood of the most excellent kind of cedar, and 'the cedar' means the spiritual Church. The fact that shittim wood was a species of cedar is clear in Isaiah,

I will plant ¹ in the wilderness the cedar of shittah, and the myrtle, and the oil tree. ² Isaiah 41:19.

Here 'the cedar of shittah' stands for spiritual good, 'the oil tree' for celestial good. Since the good worthy of merit, which is the Lord's alone, is the one and only good that reigns in heaven and makes heaven, that wood was the one and only wood that was used in the construction of the tabernacle, by which heaven was represented. It was used for example to make the actual ark, which had the Testimony in it; its poles; the table on which the loaves of the Presence were laid, and its poles; the boards for the dwelling-place; the poles and the pillars of the covering; and also the altar and its poles, as is clear from verses 10, 13, 23, 28, of the present chapter, and from Exodus 26:15, 26, 37; 27:1, 6.

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