242. The second living creature like a calf. This symbolizes the Divine truth of the Word in respect to its affection.

Beasts of the earth symbolize various natural affections. They are also embodiments of them. And a calf symbolizes an affection for knowing. This affection is represented by a calf in the spiritual world, and in the Word it is consequently also symbolized by a calf, as in Hosea,

...we repay (to Jehovah) the calves of our lips. (Hosea 14:2)

"Calves of the lips" are confessions from an affection for truth.

In Malachi:

To you who fear My name the sun of righteousness shall arise with healing in its wings... that you may grow fat like fattened calves. (Malachi 4:2)

A comparison is made with fattened calves because they symbolize people who are filled with concepts of truth and goodness owing to an affection for knowing them.

In the book of Psalms:

The voice of Jehovah... makes (the cedars of Lebanon) dance like a calf... (Psalms 29:5, 6)

The cedars of Lebanon symbolize concepts of truth. That is why the passage says that the voice of Jehovah makes them dance like a calf. The voice of Jehovah is Divine truth, in the process here of affecting.

[2] Since the Egyptians loved knowledge, they therefore made themselves calves as a sign of their affection for it. But after they began to worship the calves as deities, then calves in the Word symbolized affections for knowing falsities, as in Jeremiah 46:20-21). Therefore we are told in Hosea:

...they have made for themselves a molten image... of their silver... Sacrificing a human being, they kiss the calves. (Hosea 13:2)

To make for oneself a molten image of silver means, symbolically, to falsify truth. To sacrifice a human being means, symbolically, to destroy wisdom. And to kiss calves means, symbolically, to accept falsities out of an affection for them.

In Isaiah:

There the calf will feed; there it will lie down and consume its branches. (Isaiah 27:10)

The same is symbolically meant by the calf in Jeremiah 34:18-20.

[3] Since all Divine worship springs from affections for truth and goodness and so for concepts of them, therefore the sacrifices in which the worship of the church primarily consisted among the children of Israel used various animals, such as lambs, she-goats, kids, sheep, he-goats, calves, and oxen; and calves were used because they symbolized an affection for knowing truths and goods, which is the first natural affection. This affection was symbolically meant by the sacrifices of calves in Exodus 29:11-12, ¹ 1 Samuel 1:25; 16:2, 1 Kings 18:23-26, 33.

The second living creature looked like a calf because the Divine truth of the Word, which it symbolizes, affects hearts, and so teaches and instills.

Poznámky pod čarou:

3905. 'Rachel saw that she was not bearing Jacob [any children]' means that interior truth was not yet acknowledged. This is clear from the representation of 'Rachel' as the affection for interior truth, or as interior truth itself, dealt with in 3758, 3782, 3793, 3819; from the meaning of 'bearing' as acknowledging in action as well as in faith, dealt with below; and from the representation of 'Jacob' as the good of natural truth, dealt with in 3669, 3677, 3829, and in the whole of the previous chapter. The reason why 'bearing' means acknowledging in action as well as in faith is that births in the Word mean spiritual births, 1145, 1255, 3860, 3868. Spiritual birth is the acknowledgement of and faith in truth and good, in this verse acknowledgement in action as well as in faith, that is to say, an acknowledgement of the interior truth represented by 'Rachel'. Since something is not acknowledged in faith until a person is living according to it the phrase 'acknowledgement in action as well as in faith' is therefore used. Truths of faith which are not learned for the sake of putting them into action but solely for the sake of knowing them attach themselves to affections for evil and falsity, and as a consequence are not the truths of faith with the person who learns them but within him go against faith.