5704. 'The firstborn according to his birthright, and the youngest according to his youth' means in conformity with the order truths take beneath good. This is clear from the meaning of 'taking seats according to birthright, and according to youth' as in conformity with the order truths take beneath good. The sons of Israel represent the truths known to the Church existing in their proper order, see the explanation at Chapters 29, 30 of Genesis, and therefore taking their seats according to their order of birth means in conformity with the order truths take. But the truths known to the Church, which 'the sons of Israel' represent, do not come to be arranged into any kind of proper order except through Christian good, that is, through the good of charity towards the neighbour and of love to the Lord. For good has the Lord within it, and therefore has heaven within it. Good consequently has life within it, making it a force that is active and filled with life. But truth devoid of good cannot possibly have any life within it. Good arranges truths into order in keeping with itself, as is quite evident from every kind of love, including self-love and love of the world, and so such love as gives rise to vengeance, hatred, and other evils like these. People governed by those loves call evil good because they take delight in evil. This so-called good of theirs imposes a certain kind of order on those falsities which to them are truths - a kind of order that enables these falsities to lend support to it, till at length all those falsities, which they call truths, are arranged into an order that becomes a sequence of false beliefs. But this order is the kind of order that exists in hell, whereas the order in which truths are ranged beneath the good of heavenly love is the kind that exists in heaven. This also explains why a person with whom the latter kind of order resides, that is, a person who has been regenerated, is called a miniature heaven and also is heaven in the smallest form of all that it can take; for his interiors correspond to the heavens.

[2] The fact that good is what brings order to truths is evident from order as it exists in the heavens. All the communities there are ranged in conformity with the order in which truths that are received from the Lord exist beneath good. For [in His own Being] the Lord is nothing else than Divine Good, while Divine Truth, which does not exist within Him, goes forth from Him. And it is in conformity with this Divine Truth ranged beneath Divine Good that all the communities of heaven have been arranged into order. As regards the Lord's being nothing else than Divine Love whereas Divine Truth does not exist within Him but goes forth from Him, this can be illustrated by a comparison made with the sun of this world. The sun is nothing else than fire, while its light does not exist within it but goes forth from it. What is more, objects in the world dependent on light, such as plants, are subject to the order imparted to them by the heat that goes forth from the fire of the sun and exists within the light of the sun, as is evident in springtime and summertime. For since the Whole natural order is a theatre representative of the Lord's kingdom, so is this whole situation involving the sun representative. The sun represents the Lord; its fire represents His Divine Love; the heat from it represents the good that flows from this Love, and its light the truths that constitute faith. And since they have these representations, 'the sun' is also used in the spiritual sense of the Word to mean the Lord, 1053, 1521, 1529-1531, 3636, 3643, 4321 (end), 5097, 5377, 'fire' to mean love, 934, 4906, 5071, 5215, so that the sun's fire in a representative sense is Divine Love, while the heat from that fire is good flowing from Divine love. As regards 'light' meaning truth, see 2776, 3138, 3190, 3195, 3222, 3339, 3636, 3643, 3862, 3993, 4302, 4409, 4413, 4415, 4526, 5219, 5400.

3393. 'And Abimelech called Isaac and said' means the Lord's perception from doctrine. This is clear from the representation of 'Abimelech' as doctrine which has regard to rational concepts, dealt with in 2504, 2509, 2510, 2533, 3391; from the representation of 'Isaac' as the Lord's Divine Rational, dealt with above; and from the meaning of 'laying' as perceiving, dealt with in 1898, 1919, 2080, 2862. And because 'Abimelech' means that doctrine, in which the Divine was now perceived, 3392, Abimelech also represents the Lord in regard to that doctrine. For every single thing in the Word refers in the highest sense to the Lord. Indeed the Lord is doctrine itself, that is, the Word, not only as to the highest sense there, but also as to the internal sense, and even as to the literal sense.

[2] For the literal sense is the representative of, and carries all that is meant in the internal sense, and the internal sense in turn is representative of and carries all that is meant in the highest sense In the Word every representative or meaningful sign is in essence that which is represented or meant by it, and for that reason is the Lord's Divine. For a representative is nothing else than an image of the one who is being represented, and the image holds within itself the one who is presented. This may be seen from a person's speech and also from his gestures; that is to say, his speech and gestures are merely images of the things that are going on inwardly in that person's thought and will, so that speech and gestures are the thought and will expressed in outward form. Take away thought and will from them and you would be left with something wholly lifeless, and so with nothing human at all. From this one may see the true nature of the Word - that it is Divine, even in the letter.