“The eyes are the windows of the soul.” That's a sentiment with roots somewhere in murky antiquity, but one that has become hopelessly cliché because it is both poetic and obviously true. We feel that if we can look in someone's eyes, we can truly know what they are inside. And it's not just the eyes; really it is the face as a whole that conveys this. As Swedenborg puts it, the face is “man's spiritual world presented in his natural world” (Heaven and Hell, No. 91). Our faces reveal our interior thoughts and feelings in myriad ways, which is why psychologists, poker players and criminal investigators spend so much time studying them. It makes sense, then, that people's faces in the Bible represent their interiors, the thoughts, loves and desires they hold most deeply. We turn our faces to the ground to show humility when we bow in worship; we turn them to the mountains when seeking inspiration; we turn them toward our enemies when we are ready to battle temptation. When things are hard, we need to “face facts,” or accept them internally. When the topic is the Lord's face, it represents the Lord's interiors, which are perfect love and perfect mercy. And when people turn away from the Lord and refuse his love, it is described as the Lord “hiding his face.”

(références: Heaven and Hell 91)

287. And the number of them was ten thousand times ten thousand, and thousands of thousands. This symbolizes all possessing truths and goods.

The meaning of a number in its natural sense has relation to measure or weight, while the meaning of a number in its spiritual sense has relation to character; and here the people's character is described by there being ten thousand times ten thousand of them and thousands of thousands; for ten thousand is predicated of truths, while a thousand is predicated of goods.

Ten thousand is predicated of truths and a thousand of goods because ten thousand is the greater number, and a thousand the lesser, and truths are complex, while goods are not; also because where the subject in the Word is truths, it deals as well with goods, owing to the marriage of truth and goodness in every part of the Word. Without that marriage the text could have said only ten thousand times ten thousand.

Because these two numbers have these symbolic meanings, they are specified therefore also elsewhere, as in the following places:

The chariots of God are twice ten thousand, even thousands of angels of peace, the Lord among them, in Sinai, in the Holy Place. (Psalms 68:17)

I watched when... the Ancient of Days was seated... Thousands of thousands ministered to Him, and ten thousand times ten thousand stood before Him. (Daniel 7:9-10)

(Moses said of Joseph,) ...his horns are the horns of a unicorn; with them He will smite the peoples to the ends of the earth, and they are the ten thousands of Ephraim, and... the thousands of Manasseh. (Deuteronomy 33:17)

You shall not be afraid (for yourself)...of the pestilence that creeps in the darkness, or of the death that lays waste at noonday. A thousand will fall at your side, and ten thousand at your right hand... (Psalms 91:5-7)

...our sheep thousands, ten thousands in our streets. (Psalms 144:13)

Is Jehovah pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousands of rivers of oil? (Micah 6:7)

When (the Ark) rested, (Moses) said: "Return, O Jehovah, to the ten thousand thousands of Israel." (Numbers 10:36)

In all of these places ten thousands refer to truths, and thousands to goods.