315. "A quart of wheat for a denarius, and three quarts of barley for a denarius." This symbolically means, because the value these people placed on goodness and truth was so little as to be scarcely anything.

This is the symbolic meaning because a quart, which is a measure and its contents, symbolizes the character of a thing, as shown in no. 313 above. Wheat and barley symbolize goodness and truth, and a denarius, being a very small coin, symbolizes a value so little as to be scarcely anything.

Three quarts of barley are specified because the number three symbolizes all and is predicated of truths (no. 400).

Wheat and barley symbolizes goodness and truth, here the goodness and truth of the church acquired from the Word, because everything connected with a field or vineyard symbolizes something having to do with the church - a field symbolizing the church in respect to its goodness and consequent truth, and a vineyard symbolizing the church in respect to its truth and consequent goodness. Therefore, where these are mentioned in the Word, angels, who perceive everything spiritually, have no other understanding of them - as for example in Joel:

The field is wasted, the land mourns, because the grain is wasted, the new wine is dried up, the oil fails. Ashamed are the farmers, the vinedressers wail, over the wheat and the barley, because the harvest of the field has perished. (Joel 1:10-12)

All of these things symbolize things having to do with the church.

[2] That wheat and barley symbolize the goodness and truth of the church can be seen from the following passages:

(John said of Jesus that He would) gather his wheat into the granary and burn the chaff with fire... (Matthew 3:11-12)

(Jesus said,) "Let (weed and wheat) grow together..., and at the time of harvest I will say to the reapers, 'First gather together the weeds... to burn them, but gather the wheat into my granary.'" (Matthew 23:24-30)

...I have heard from Jehovah God... a consummation and determination... Plant the measured wheat, and the appointed barley... (Thus) He instructs him for judgment; His God teaches him. (Isaiah 28:21-26)

...Jehovah... will bring you into... a land of wheat and barley... (Deuteronomy 8:7-8)

The land of wheat and barley here is the land of Canaan, which symbolizes the church.

They shall come and sing in the height of Zion, and shall flow together to the goodness of Jehovah, for wheat and new wine... (Jeremiah 31:12)

(Jehovah) will fill you with the finest wheat. (Psalms 147:12-14, cf. Deuteronomy 32:13-14, Psalms 81:13, 16)

Jehovah told the prophet Ezekiel to make himself a cake of barleycorn mixed with dung and eat it (Ezekiel 4:12, 15). And He told the prophet Hosea to take to himself an adulterous woman, whom he bought for one and a half omers of barleycorn (Hosea 3:1-2). The prophets did these things to represent the falsifications of truth in the church, for barleycorns are truths, and barleycorns mixed with dung are truths falsified and profaned. An adulterous woman also symbolizes truth falsified (no. 134).

1073. 'He was uncovered in the middle of his tent' means resulting perversities. This is clear from the meaning of being 'uncovered' or naked. For someone is called uncovered and naked from drunkenness caused by wine when no truths of faith reside with him, and more so when perversities reside there. Truths of faith themselves are compared to garments that clothe charity or the goods that stem from charity, for charity is the body itself, and truths therefore the garments. Or what is equally the case, charity is the soul itself, while truths of faith are like the body that is the clothing for the soul. What is more, in the Word the truths of faith are called 'garments' and 'a covering'; hence the statement in verse 23 below that 'Shem and Japheth took a garment and covered their father's nakedness'. The relationship of spiritual things to celestial is like that of the body that clothes the soul, or like garments clothing the body, and indeed in heaven spiritual things are represented by garments. Here, because it is said that 'he lay uncovered', it means that he divested himself of the truths of faith through desiring to probe into them by means of sensory evidence and reasonings based on this. Similar concepts are meant in the Word by 'lying naked as a result of being drunk from wine', as in Jeremiah,

Rejoice and be glad, O daughter of Edom, dweller in the land of Uz. Over you also the cup will pass, you will become drunk and strip yourself naked. Lamentations 4:11.

And in Habakkuk,

Woe to him who makes his neighbour drink, and by also making them drunk to look upon their nakedness. Habakkuk 2:15.