79. There are many passages in the prophets about our understanding of the Word, passages about the church, where it tells us that the church exists only where the Word is properly understood, and that the quality of a church depends on the quality of the understanding of the Word among its members. There are also many passages in the prophets that describe the church among the Israelite and Jewish people, a church that was utterly destroyed and annihilated by the distortion of the Word’s meaning or message, for this is exactly what destroys a church.

[2] The name Ephraim in the prophets, especially in Hosea, symbolizes both true and false understandings of the Word, because Ephraim in the Word means the understanding of the Word in the church. It is because the understanding of the Word makes a church that Ephraim is called “a precious child, and one born of delights” (Jeremiah 31:20), “the firstborn” (Jeremiah 31:9), “the strength of Jehovah’s head” (Psalms 60:7; 108:8), “powerful” (Zechariah 10:7), and “filled with a bow” (Zechariah 9:13); and the children of Ephraim are called “armed” and “bow-shooters” (Psalms 78:9). The bow means a body of teaching from the Word fighting against what is false.

So too, Ephraim was transferred to the right of Israel and blessed, and accepted in place of Reuben (Genesis 48:5, 11, and following; [1 Chronicles 5:1]). And therefore Ephraim, together with his brother Manasseh, was exalted over all by Moses in his blessing of the children of Israel in the name of their father Joseph (Deuteronomy 33:13-17).

[3] The prophets, especially Hosea, also use “Ephraim” to describe what the church is like when its understanding of the Word has been lost, as we can see from the following:

Israel and Ephraim will stumble. Ephraim will be desolate. Ephraim is oppressed and broken in judgment. I will be like a lion to Ephraim: I will tear them and leave; I will carry them off and no one will rescue them. (Hosea 5:5, 9, 11, 14)

What shall I do to you, Ephraim? Your holiness goes away like a cloud at dawn and like the morning dew that falls. (Hosea 6:4)

[4] They will not dwell in the land of Jehovah: Ephraim will go back to Egypt and will eat what is unclean in Assyria. (Hosea 9:3)

The land of Jehovah is the church, Egypt is the preoccupation of the earthly self with mere facts, and Assyria is rationalizing based on those facts; all of which lead to distortion of the Word in regard to the way it is understood. That is why it says that Ephraim will go back to Egypt and will eat what is unclean in Assyria.

[5] Ephraim feeds on the wind and chases the east wind. Every day he increases lies and devastation. He makes a covenant with Assyria, and oil is carried down into Egypt. (Hosea 12:1)

To feed on the wind, chase the east wind, and increase lies and devastation is to distort what is true and in this way destroy the church.

[6] Much the same is also meant by Ephraim’s whoredom, since whoredom means distortion of the way the Word is understood - that is, distortion of its genuine truth. See the following passages:

I know Ephraim; he has committed whoredom in every way and Israel has been defiled. (Hosea 5:3)

I have seen something foul in the house of Israel: Ephraim has committed whoredom there, and Israel has been defiled. (Hosea 6:10)

Israel is the church itself and Ephraim is the understanding of the Word that is the source of the church and that determines its quality, so it says that Ephraim has committed whoredom and Israel has been defiled.

[7] Since the church among Jews had been completely destroyed because of its distortions, it says of Ephraim,

Am I to give you up, Ephraim? Am I to hand you over, Israel? Like Admah? Shall I make you like Zeboiim? (Hosea 11:8)

Since the book of the prophet Hosea, from the first chapter to the last, is about the distortion of the Word and the consequent destruction of the church, and since whoredom means the distortion of truth in the church, the prophet was commanded to represent that state of the church by taking a whore as his wife and fathering children by her (chapter 1); and also by forming a relationship with a woman who was committing adultery (chapter 3).

[8] These instances have been presented so that readers may know and be assured from the Word that the quality of a church depends on the quality of the understanding of the Word in it - outstanding and priceless if its understanding comes from genuine truths from the Word, but in ruins, actually filthy, if it comes from distortions.

For further evidence that Ephraim means the understanding of the Word, and in its opposite sense a distorted understanding leading to the destruction of the church, you may check some other passages that deal with Ephraim: Hosea 4:17-18; 7:1, 11; 8:9, 11; 9:11-13, 16; 10:11; 11:3; 12:1, 8, 14; 13:1, 8, 14; Isaiah 17:3; 28:1; Jeremiah 4:15; 31:6, 18; 50:19; Ezekiel 37:16; 48:5; Obadiah verse 19; Zechariah 9:10.

571. And on its heads a blasphemous name. This symbolizes their denial of the Lord's Divine humanity and affirmation of their church's doctrine, drawn not from the Word but from their own intelligence.

The seven heads symbolize irrationality resulting from absolute falsities, as said in no. 568 above. And this irrationality utters blasphemy when it denies the Lord's Divinity present in His humanity. It also does this when it does not draw the doctrine of the church from the Word, but hatches it from its own intelligence.

As regards the first, that it is blasphemy to deny the Lord's Divinity present in His humanity, the reason is that someone who denies it goes against the creed accepted throughout the Christian world called the Athanasian Creed, which plainly says that in Jesus Christ, God and man - which is to say, the Divine and the human - are not two but one, and that they constitute one person, being united as soul and body. Consequently people who deny the Divinity in the Lord's humanity are close to being Socinians ¹ and Arians, ² especially when they think of the Lord's humanity by itself as being like that of any other man, and do not think at all then of His Divinity from eternity.

[2] As regards the second, that it is blasphemy not to draw the doctrine of the church from the Word, but to hatch it from one's own intelligence, the reason is that the church is founded on the Word and its character is such as its understanding of the Word (see The Doctrine of the New Jerusalem Regarding the Sacred Scripture, nos. 76-79), and the doctrine that faith alone - that is, faith apart from works of the law - justifies and saves, comes not from the Word, but from a single saying of Paul (Romans 3:28), ³ falsely interpreted (see no. 417).

Moreover, every doctrinal falsity takes it origin from no other source than people's own intelligence. For what is more universally taught in the Word than to refrain from evil and do good? And what is more evident there than the precept that God is to be loved, and the neighbor also? Who does not see, too, that no one is capable of loving the neighbor unless he lives in conformity with the works of the law? Also, anyone who does not love his neighbor does not love God either, for it is in love for the neighbor that the Lord conjoins Himself with a person and that a person conjoins himself with the Lord; that is to say, that it is in that love that God and man join together. What, then, is it to love the neighbor except to refrain from doing evil to him, in accordance with the commandments of the Decalogue (Romans 13:8-11)? And to the extent a person wills not to do evil to the neighbor, to the same extent he wills to do good to him.

It is apparent from this that it is blasphemy to eliminate works of the law from salvation, as those people do who make faith alone the only saving faith, namely, faith divorced from good works.

The blasphemy referred to in Matthew 12:31-32 means to deny the Lord's Divinity, as Socinians do, and to reject the Word. For people who so deny the Lord's Divinity cannot enter heaven, as the Lord's Divinity is everything in everything connected with heaven, and anyone who rejects the Word rejects everything connected with religion.

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