79. In many places in the Prophets the subject is an understanding of the Word when referring to the church, and the teaching is that the church exists only where the Word is rightly understood, and that the character of the church is such as the understanding of the Word among the people in the church.

Many places in the Prophets also describe the church that existed in the Israelite and Jewish nation, saying that it was entirely destroyed and ended by the people’s falsifying the sense and meaning of the Word. For nothing else destroys the church.

[2] Ephraim in the Prophets describes both a true understanding of the Word and a false one, especially in Hosea, for Ephraim in the Word symbolizes the understanding of the Word in the church. And because an understanding of the Word is what forms the church, therefore Ephraim is called a “dear son” and “a pleasant child” (Jeremiah 31:20); the “firstborn” (Jeremiah 31:9); “the helmet” of Jehovah’s head (Psalms 60:7, 108:8); “a mighty man” (Zechariah 10:7); “fitted with the bow” (Zechariah 9:13). And the children of Ephraim are called “armed” and “shooters of the bow” (Psalms 78:9). A bow symbolizes doctrine from the Word battling against falsities.

Ephraim was also therefore shifted to Israel’s right hand and blessed, and taken in place of Reuben (Genesis 48:5, 11ff.).

And Ephraim, with his brother Manasseh, under the name of their father Joseph, was therefore praised above all the others by Moses in his blessing the children of Israel (Deuteronomy 33:13-17).

[3] At the same time, the character of the church when any understanding of the Word has been lost is also described by Ephraim in the Prophets, especially in Hosea, as is apparent from the following:

...Israel and Ephraim shall stumble.... Ephraim shall be desolate.... Ephraim is oppressed and shaken in judgment.... ...I will be like a lion to Ephraim.... I...will seize them and go away; I will take them away and not rescue them. (Hosea 5:5, 9, 11-14)

O Ephraim, what shall I do to you? ...For your holiness is like a morning cloud, and like the falling morning dew it goes away. (Hosea 6:4)

[4] They shall not dwell in Jehovah’s land, but Ephraim shall return to Egypt, and shall eat unclean food in Assyria. (Hosea 9:3)

Jehovah’s land is the church. Egypt is the factual knowledge of the natural man. Assyria is his resulting reasoning, by which the Word is falsified as regards any understanding of it. That is why we are told that Ephraim shall return to Egypt and eat unclean food in Assyria.

[5] Ephraim feeds on the wind, and pursues the east wind; he daily increases lies and desolation. He makes a covenant with the Assyrians, and oil is carried down into Egypt. (Hosea 12:1)

To feed on the wind, to pursue the east wind, and to increase lies and desolation is to falsify truths and so destroy the church.

[6] The harlotry of Ephraim, too, has the same symbolic meaning. For harlotry symbolizes the falsifying of an understanding of the Word, that is, of its genuine truth. As in the following:

I know Ephraim..., (that he surely) has committed harlotry, (and) Israel is defiled. (Hosea 5:3)

I have seen a foul thing in the house of Israel: there Ephraim committed harlotry, (and) Israel is defiled. (Hosea 6:10)

Israel is the church, and Ephraim is its understanding of the Word, which forms the church and its character. That is why Ephraim is said to have committed harlotry and Israel to be defiled.

[7] Since the church with the Jews was utterly destroyed by its falsifications of the Word, therefore regarding Ephraim we read the following:

...will I give you up, Ephraim? ...will I hand you over, Israel? ...like Admah? (Or) will I set you like Zeboiim? (Hosea 11:8)

Now because the prophet Hosea, from the first chapter to the last, has as his subject the falsification of the Word and its destruction of the church, and because harlotry symbolizes a falsification of the truth in it, therefore the prophet was commanded to represent the state of the church by taking himself a harlot as his woman and producing children by her (chapter 1), and a second time by taking an adulteress as his woman (chapter 3).

[8] We have cited these passages to make it known from the Word and confirmed by it that the character of the church is such as the understanding of the Word in it: an excellent and precious church if its understanding is formed by genuine truths drawn from the Word, but a destroyed church, indeed a foul one, if its understanding is formed by truths falsified.

As confirmation that Ephraim symbolizes an understanding of the Word, and in an opposite sense that understanding falsified, and that the result is the destruction of the church, all the other passages dealing with Ephraim could be presented, such as Hosea 4:17-18, 7:1, 11, 8:9, 11, 9:11-13, 16, 10:11, 11:3, 12:1, 8, 14, 13:1, 12; Isaiah 17:3, 28:1; Jeremiah 4:15, 31:6, 18, 50:19; Ezekiel 37:16, 48:5; Obadiah 1:19; Zechariah 9:10.