425. Up to now the world has not known that 'bronze' means natural good, nor indeed that every metal mentioned in the Word has some definite meaning in the internal sense. For example 'gold' means celestial good, 'silver' spiritual truth, 'bronze' natural good, 'iron' natural truth, and so on with all the rest. The same applies to stone and wood. These were the meanings of the gold, silver, bronze, and wood in the Ark and the Tabernacle, and of similar objects in the Temple, which in the Lord's Divine mercy will be dealt with later on. In the Prophets it is plain that such things are meant, as in Isaiah,

You will suck the milk of nations, and the breast of kings will you suck. Instead of bronze I will bring gold, and instead of iron, I will bring silver, and instead of wood, bronze, and instead or stones, iron. And I will make peace your assessment and righteousness your tax-collectors. Isaiah 60:16-17.

This refers to the Coming of the Lord and to His kingdom, and to the celestial Church. 'Gold instead of bronze' means celestial good instead of natural good. 'Silver instead of iron' means spiritual truth instead of natural truth. 'Bronze instead of wood' means natural good instead of bodily good. 'Iron instead of stones' means natural truth instead of sensory truth. In Ezekiel,

Javan, Tubal, and Meshech, they were your merchants in the souls of men, and they gave vessels of bronze for your merchandise. Ezekiel 27:13

This refers to Tyre, which means people who are in possession of spiritual and celestial riches. 'Vessels of bronze' stands for natural goods. In Moses,

A land whose stones are Iron, and from whose mountains you will dig out bronze. Deuteronomy 8:9.

Here similarly 'stones' stands for sensory truth, 'iron' for natural or rational truth, and 'bronze' for natural good. In the cases of the four living creatures or the cherubim seen by Ezekiel, whose feet sparkled like burnished bronze, Ezekiel 1:7, 'bronze' in a similar way means natural good, for the human foot represents that which is natural. Something similar was seen by Daniel,

A man clothed in linen whose loins were girded with gold of Uphaz and whose body was like tarshish. ¹ His arms and feet were like the appearance of burnished bronze. Daniel 10:5-6

And for the fact that the bronze serpent mentioned in Numbers 21:9 represented the Lord's good, sensory and natural, see what has been said already [in 197].

Fußnoten:

3080. 'And the girl was very good looking' means the beauty of the affection for truth. This is clear from the meaning of 'a girl' as affection that has innocence within it, dealt with in 3067. The reason 'very good looking' means beauty, in this case the beauty of the affection for truth since it is called 'a girl', is that all beauty comes from good in which innocence is present. When flowing in from the internal man into the external man good itself constitutes that which is beautiful. This is the source of all human beauty. This may be recognized also from the fact that it is not a person's face but the affection shining out of it that stirs the feelings in another; and in the case of those who love what is good it is the affection for good seen in a person's face that stirs them, which it does in the measure that innocence is present in the good which they love. Thus it is the spiritual within the natural that stirs their affections, not the natural devoid of the spiritual. In a similar way the feelings of those who love what is good are stirred by young children whom they see as beautiful in the measure that the innocence which goes with charity is present in the children's faces, actions, and speech. It is goodness and charity that give form to and constitute beauty, see 553; and that is why 'the girl was very good looking' means the beauty of the affection for truth that has good within it.