10110. To fill their hand. That this signifies to receive Divine truth, is evident from the signification of “filling the hand,” as being to represent the Lord as to Divine truth, and its capability of communication and reception there (see n. 10076). It is said that they should “eat the holy things in which expiation was made, to fill their hand,” and by these things is signified the appropriation of good with those who are purified from evils and the derivative falsities, thus to receive Divine truth.

[2] The case herein is this. The first of all that is appropriated to man is good, and successively truth. The reason is that good is the ground, and truth is the seed; just so in like manner does good adopt truth and conjoin it with itself, because it loves it like a parent. For there is a heavenly conjugial relation between good and truth; and good is that which makes the life with man, because good is of the will, and the will of man is the man himself; whereas truth does not make the life with man except insofar as it partakes of good, because truth is of the understanding, and the understanding without the will is not the man himself, but only an entrance to the man, for entrance is made through the understanding.

[3] Man may be compared to a house in which are a number of rooms, one of which leads into another. They who are in truths as to the understanding only, are not in any room of the house, but only in the court; but insofar as through the understanding truth enters into the will, so far the man enters into the rooms and dwells in the house. Moreover, in the Word man is compared to a house, and the truth which is of the understanding alone is compared to a court; but the truth which has been made also of the will, and has there become good, is compared to an inhabited room and to the very bedchamber.

[4] That good is that which is first of all appropriated to man from the Lord is evident from his infancy and early childhood; when, as is well known, he has the good of innocence and the good of love toward his parents and toward his nurse, and the good of charity toward his infant companions. This good flows in from the Lord with infants so that it may serve in advancing age for the first of the Lord’s life with man, and thus for a plane to receive truths. This good is also preserved with a man when he grows up, if he does not destroy it by a life of evil and a faith of falsity thence derived. When we speak of good, charity toward the neighbor is meant, and love to the Lord, for all that which is of love and charity is good. (That with those who are being regenerated good is in the first place and truth in the second, although it appears otherwise, see n. 3325, 3494, 3539, 3548, 3556, 3563, 3570, 4925, 4926, 4928, 4930, 6256, 6269, 6272, 6273.)

1317. And this is what they begin to do. That this signifies that now they began to become different, is evident from the connection. To “begin to do,” here signifies their thought or intention, and consequently their end, as also is evident from the words that next follow, “and now nothing will be withholden from them of all which they have thought to do.” That in the internal sense their end is signified, is because nothing else than the end in a man is regarded by the Lord. Whatever may be his thoughts and deeds-which vary in ways innumerable-provided the end is made good, they are all good; whereas if the end is evil, they are all evil. It is the end that reigns in everything a man thinks and does. The angels with a man, being the Lord’s angels, rule nothing in the man but his ends; for when they rule these, they rule also his thoughts and actions, seeing that all these are of the end. The end with a man is his very life; and all things that he thinks and does have life from the end, for, as was said, they are of the end; and therefore such as is the end, such is the man’s life. The end is nothing else than the love; for a man cannot have anything as an end except that which he loves. He who thinks one thing and does another, still has as the end that which he loves; in the dissimulation itself, or in the deceit, there is the end, which is the love of self or the love of the world, and the derivative delight of his life. From these considerations anyone may conclude that such as is a man’s love, such is his life. These therefore are the things signified by “beginning to do.”