434. They had hair like women's hair. (9:8) This symbolically means that they seemed to themselves to have an affection for truth.
In the Word a man symbolizes an understanding of truth, and a woman an affection for truth, because a man is by birth a form of the intellect, and a woman a form of affection, as we say in Angelic Wisdom Regarding Marriage. 1
Hair in the Word symbolizes the lowest level of a person's life, which is the sensual level, as said in no. 424. It is on this level that it seems to these people that they have an affection for truth, when in fact they have an affection for falsity, since they believe it to be true.
That a woman symbolizes an affection for truth can be seen from many passages in the Word. So it is that the church is called a wife, woman, daughter, and virgin. The church, moreover, is a church by virtue of its love or affection for truth, for this is what gives rise to an understanding of truth.
[2] The church is called a woman in the following places:
...there were two women, the daughters of one mother, (who) committed harlotry in Egypt..., Oholah (being) Samaria, and Oholibah (being) Jerusalem. (Ezekiel 23:2-4)
...Jehovah has called you like a woman forsaken and afflicted in spirit, and a youthful woman... (Isaiah 54:6-7)
...Jehovah has created a new thing in the earth - a woman shall encompass a man. (Jeremiah 31:21-22)
The woman clothed with the sun, whom the dragon pursued (Revelation 12), symbolizes the New Church, which is the New Jerusalem.
Women symbolize affections for truth, by virtue of which the church is a church, in many other places, as in the following:
The women of My people you cast out from its delightful house. (Micah 2:9)
(The families of the houses shall mourn by themselves,) and... women by themselves... (Zechariah 12:11-13)
Rise up, you women at ease, hear... my speech. (Isaiah 32:9)
Why do you do... evil..., to cut off from you man and woman...? (Jeremiah 44:7)
...I will scatter man and woman... (Jeremiah 51:22)
A man and woman, here and elsewhere, mean, symbolically in the spiritual sense, an understanding of truth and an affection for truth.
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