211. "'I urge you to buy from Me gold refined in the fire, that you may be enriched.'" (3:18) This symbolizes an admonition to acquire for themselves the goodness of love from the Lord by means of the Word, in order to become wise.

That is because to buy means, symbolically, to acquire for oneself. "From Me" symbolically means, from the Lord by means of the Word. Gold symbolizes goodness, and gold refined in the fire, the goodness of celestial love. And to be enriched means, symbolically, to understand and become wise.

Gold symbolizes goodness because metals in their hierarchy symbolize qualities connected with goodness and truth. Gold symbolizes celestial and spiritual goodness; silver, the truth accompanying those good qualities; bronze, natural goodness; and iron, natural truth.

These are the symbolic meanings of the metals of which Nebuchadnezzar's statue consisted, the head of which was gold, the breast and arms silver, the belly and thighs bronze, the legs iron, and the feet partly iron and partly clay (Daniel 2:32-33). These metals represented the successive states of the church in respect to the goodness of its love and the truth of its wisdom.

Because the states of the church followed in succession in this way, the ancients therefore gave the ages these same names, calling them the golden age, the silver age, the bronze age, and the iron age. And by the golden age they meant the first period, when the goodness of celestial love reigned. Celestial love is love toward the Lord received from the Lord. From this love they then had their wisdom.

To be shown that gold symbolizes the goodness of love, see no. 913 below.

Like so many common verbs, the meaning of "know" in the Bible is varied and dependent on context. And in some cases -- when it is connected to ideas or objects -- its spiritual meaning and natural meaning are essentially the same. When the Bible talks about people knowing each other and especially when it talks about the Lord knowing people, the meaning has more to do with the states of love within people than it does with any factual knowledge. This makes sense if you think about it. When we really "know" somebody, what we mean is that we know what kind of person they are, what their motivations are, what they love, what they hate, what makes them tick. Those things are far more important than knowing their parents' names, where they were born or what year they graduated from school. Most often then, especially applied to people, "knowing" has to do with the perceptions we have about other people's loves and the conjunction that can exist between those with similar loves, not just a collection of facts.