A "field" in the Bible usually represents the Lord's church, and more specifically the desire for good within the church. It's where good things start, take root, and grow. When you have a desire to be a good person and to do good things, the natural first questions are "What does that mean?", "What should I do?", "What can I do?". You look for ideas, concepts, direction. Once you figure out something you want to do or a change you want to make in yourself, you seek specific knowledge. If you want to volunteer at a food pantry, say, you'd need to know whom to call, when they need help, where to go, what to bring. Armed with that knowhow, you're ready to get to work. That process could be compared to food production. You start with a field -- which is that desire to be good. Then you plant seeds -- those ideas and concepts. Those seeds sprout into plants -- the specific facts and knowledge needed for the task (easily seen in the food pantry example, but also true with deeper tasks like "being more tolerant of my co-workers" or "taking more time for prayer," or "consciously being a more loving spouse"). Finally, those plants produce food -- the actual good thing that you go and do. The Writings also say that in a number of cases a "field" represents the doctrine, or teachings, of the church. This sounds markedly different. The desire for good is emotional, a drive, a wanting; doctrine is a set of ideas. But for a church to be true, its doctrine must be centered on a desire for good, and must lead people toward doing what is good. So sound doctrine is actually closely bound up with the desire for good.

8609. 'And they took a stone' means the lowest level of God's truth. This is clear from the meaning of 'a stone' as truth, 643, 1298, 3720, 3769, 3771, 3789, 3798, 6426, in this instance the lowest level of truth since it was put underneath him and he sat on it. An ordinary stone furthermore means a lower level of truth, while a precious stone means a higher or more internal level of truth. What the lowest level of truth is becomes clear from what has been stated above in 8603 about the levels of truth that follow one another in order; that is to say, there are interior truths and exterior truths, the lowest of which are meant by the lowest level of truth.