1783. Inner Meaning
THE contents here, as I have said before, are true history. 1 Jehovah did talk this way with Abram, and promised him he would inherit the land of Canaan. Jehovah did command Abram to arrange the heifer, she-goat, ram, turtledove, and chick as he did. The winged creatures did swoop down onto the bodies. Slumber did fall on Abram, and in his sleep, terror of shadows. When the sun had set, he did see a furnace of smoke along with a torch of flame between the parts. And so on. These details are historically true, and yet each and every one of them down to the smallest action represents something, while the words of the story themselves down to the smallest jot have a symbolism. 2 In other words, every last feature has an inner meaning. Everything in the Word is inspired, and since it is inspired, it cannot come from any source but a heavenly one. It cannot hide any message but a heavenly and spiritual one in its inner recesses. Otherwise it would never be the Lord's Word.
[2] This is the message contained in the inner sense. When the inner sense lies open, the literal sense is obliterated, as if it did not exist. Conversely when attention is paid only to the historical or literal meaning, the inner meaning is obliterated, as if it did not exist.
The relationship is like that of heavenly light to the world's light, and that in turn of the world's light to heavenly light. When heavenly light appears, the world's light seems dark, as I have learned from experience. On the other hand, when anyone sees by the world's light, heavenly light would seem dark if it appeared at all. It is the same with the human mind. Anyone who relies exclusively on human wisdom, or in other words, on book learning, sees heavenly wisdom as a dark hole. Anyone who enjoys heavenly wisdom, though, finds human wisdom simplistic and vague — a form of darkness, if it is unlit by heavenly rays.
Footnotes:
1. For earlier statements about the historicity of the narrative portions of the Word from the mention of Eber in Genesis 11 onward, see, for instance, §§1403, 1408:1. [LHC]
2. On the representative function of historical facts and the symbolism of the words used to report them, see note 5 in §1401 and the passages cited there. [LHC]
