339. In the three previous chapters I have offered proof enough that the human and his wife symbolize the earliest church, so that there can be no doubt of it [§§252-253, 277, 288-289]. Since the human and his wife are the earliest church, it makes sense that what was conceived and given birth to by them could not be anything else [than what was conceived and born in the church].
The earliest people were very familiar with assigning names that had symbolic meaning and in this way creating a genealogy. After all, the church's attributes bear the same relationship to each other: one thing is conceived and born from another and relates to it like a new generation. Consequently it is common for the Word to refer to the church's attributes as times of conception and birth, as offspring, babies, children, daughters, sons, youths, and so on. The prophetic parts are full of such references. 1
Footnotes:
1. As Swedenborg indicates, the prophetic parts of the Bible are full of references to these terms. Some passages he may have in mind include Isaiah 7:14; 39:7; Jeremiah 29:6; Ezekiel 14:16, 18; Hosea 9:11; Malachi 3:3. [RS]
