282. "Out of every tribe and tongue and people and nation." This symbolically means that the Lord has redeemed those in the church or in any other religion who are impelled by truths in respect to their doctrine and by goods in respect to their life.

Tribes mean, symbolically, the church in respect to religion. Tongues symbolize its doctrine, as we will see presently. People mean, symbolically, people impelled by doctrinal truths, and abstractly doctrinal truths themselves (no. 483). And nations mean, symbolically, people who are impelled by goods of life, and abstractly goods of life themselves (no. 483). It is apparent from this that every tribe and tongue and people and nation has the symbolic meaning stated, as it does also in no. 627.

[2] We will now confirm here that tongues in the spiritual sense symbolize the doctrine possessed by a church and by every religion. This is apparent from the following:

My tongue ponders Your righteousness, Your praise all the day long. (Psalms 35:28)

My tongue shall ponder Your righteousness all the day long. (Psalms 71:24)

Then the lame shall leap like a deer, and the tongue of the dumb sing. For waters shall burst forth in the wilderness... (Isaiah 35:6)

...the tongue of stammerers will be swift to speak... (Isaiah 32:4)

It seems as though tongue there means speech, but in the spiritual sense it means that which is spoken, which is the doctrinal truth that they will have from the Lord.

So likewise:

I have sworn... that to Me every knee shall bow, every tongue swear an oath. (Isaiah 45:23)

The time will come to gather all nations and tongues, that they may come and see My glory. (Isaiah 66:18)

In those days ten men from all the tongues of the nations shall take hold of the sleeve of a Jewish man, saying, "We will go with you, for we have heard that God is with you." (Zechariah 8:23)

These passages describe as well the Lord's conversion of the nations to doctrinal truth.

[3] On the other hand, in the following places tongues in an opposite sense symbolize doctrinal falsities:

A smooth-tongued man shall not continue to exist in the land. (Psalms 140:11)

You hide them... in Your tabernacle from the strife of tongues. (Psalms 31:20)

...I will bring a nation against you... whose language you do not know... (Jeremiah 5:15)

(To be sent to peoples heavy in tongue.) (Ezekiel 3:5-6). (To a people barbarous in tongue.) (Isaiah 33:19).

It should be known that the tongue as an organ symbolizes doctrine, while as speech it symbolizes also religion.

[4] Someone who knows that the tongue symbolizes doctrine can understand what is symbolically meant by the plea of the rich man in hell to Abraham to send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool his tongue, to keep him from being tormented in the flame (Luke 16:24). The water symbolizes truth, and the tongue doctrine, by whose falsities the rich man was being tormented, and not by any flame. For no one in hell is on fire, but a flame there is how a love of falsity appears, and fire how a love of evil appears.

Father in the Word means what is most interior, and in those things that are following the Lord's order, it means what is good. In the highest sense Father means the Lord Himself, the creator. In the generation of natural children it is the father who provides the soul or the most interior receptacle of life, and an internal heredity, and the mother who provides all of the substance that the soul uses to form its body, plus an external heredity. In this process the soul comes from the Lord through the father, and not from the father, since all life is from the Lord. The wise person calls the Lord his father and the church his mother because his interior loves come from the Lord, but are given form and actuality through the truths taught by the church. Those things thus brought forth are a person's spiritual "children". In the New Testament, when speaking of Jesus and the Father, what is meant is the outward manifestation with the divine itself as the soul inside. Because Jesus was born from a natural mother, He had a natural body and a natural Jewish heredity. Throughout his life as He was tempted by the hells, He slowly put off all he had from His mother and replaced it with what He had from Himself inside, the Father. In doing this he made himself one with the Father that was His inmost so He could truly say, "I and my Father are one".