Just as natural food feeds the natural body, so too does spiritual food feed the spiritual body. And since our spiritual body is the expression of what we love, then spiritual food is what feeds our state of love: It is the desire for good, the delight of being good, the understanding of what it is to be good and the knowledge of all that's true and leads to what is good. So when food is talked about in the Bible, that's what it means, and the huge variety of forms food can take represent the huge variety of good we can seek in life and the huge variety of thought we can have leading to it.

(Odkazy: Arcana Coelestia 680, 1695, 4792, 5147, 5293, 5576, 9003)

5415. 'For the famine was in the land of Canaan' means that a desolation existed so far as things of the Church in the natural were concerned. This is clear from the meaning of 'the famine' as an absence of cognitions and consequently as a desolation, dealt with in 3364, 5277, 5279, 5281, 5300, 5349, 5360, 5376; and from the meaning of 'the land of Canaan' as the Church, dealt with in 3686, 3705, 4447. And as the Church is meant, what belongs to the Church is meant also. So it is that 'the famine was in the land of Canaan' means a desolation so far as things of the Church are concerned. The reason the desolation exists in the natural is that the words used here have reference to the sons of Jacob, by whom aspects of the external Church are meant, 5409, and consequently such things as belong to the Church within the natural.