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.

The number "two" has two different meanings in the Bible. In most cases "two" indicates a joining together or unification. This is easy to see if we consider the conflicts we tend to have between our "hearts" and our "heads" -- between what we want and what we know. Our "hearts" tell us that we want pie with ice cream for dinner; our "heads" tell us we should have grilled chicken and salad. If we can bring those two together and actually want what's good for us, we'll be pretty happy. We're built that way -- with our emotions balanced against our intellect -- because the Lord is built that way. His essence is love itself, or Divine Love, the source of all caring, emotion and energy. It is expressed as Divine Wisdom, which gives form to that love and puts it to work, and is the source of all knowledge and reasoning. In His case the two aspects are always in conjunction, always in harmony. It's easy also to see how that duality is reflected throughout creation: plants and animals, food and drink, silver and gold. Most importantly, it's reflected in the two genders, with women representing love and men representing wisdom. That's the underlying reason why conjunction in marriage is such a holy thing. So when "two" is used in the Bible to indicate some sort of pairing or unity, it means a joining together. In rare cases, however, "two" is used more purely as a number. In these cases it stands for a profane or unholy state that comes before a holy one. This is because "three" represents a state of holiness and completion (Jesus, for instance, rose from the tomb on the third day), and "two" represents the state just before it.