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.

573. Whose feet were like those of a bear. This symbolically means, full of misconceptions taken from the literal sense of the Word, read but not understood.

Feet symbolize the natural support which is the basis on which the heresy meant by the leopard rests and, so to speak, propels itself, and that support is the literal sense of the Word. A bear symbolizes people who read the Word but fail to understand it, so that they derive from it misconceptions.

That these are the people symbolized by bears became apparent to me from seeing bears in the spiritual world, and from seeing some people there wearing bearskins. They were all people who read the Word and did not see any doctrinal truth in it. They were also people who affirmed the appearances of truth there, resulting in misconceptions.

Some bears seen in the spiritual world are dangerous and some are not, and some also are white, but they are told apart by their heads. Bears that are not dangerous have heads like those of calves or sheep.

Bears symbolize people and things like this in the following passages:

A bear lying in wait for me has overturned my paths, a lion in hidden places has corrupted my ways... He has made me desolate. (Lamentations 3:9-11)

I will meet them like a bereaved bear..., and there I will devour them like a savage lion. The wild beast of the field shall rend them. (Hosea 13:8)

...there shall lie down... the calf and the young lion... The heifer and the bear shall graze. (Isaiah 11:6-7)

(The second beast that came up from the sea was) like a bear... and had three ribs in its mouth between its teeth. (Daniel 7:5)

The lion and bear that David smote, catching the lion by its beard (1 Samuel 17:34-37), have a similar symbolic meaning. So, too, in 2 Samuel 17:8.

[2] A lion and a bear are mentioned in these places because a lion symbolizes falsity destroying the Word's truths, and a bear symbolizes misconceptions that destroy them also, but not to the same degree. Thus we are told in Amos:

...the day of Jehovah...(a day of) darkness, and not light. It is as if one who flees from a lion comes upon a bear. (Amos 5:18-19)

In the second book of Kings we read that Elisha was mocked by some boys and called a baldhead, and that forty-two boys were therefore torn apart by two female bears from the woods (2 Kings 2:23-24). This occurred because Elisha represented the Lord in respect to the Word (no. 298), because baldness symbolized the Word without its literal sense, thus having no reality (no. 47), because the number forty-two symbolized blasphemy (no. 583), and because female bears symbolized the literal sense of the Word read indeed, but not understood.