10178. 'With pieces of shittim wood you shall make it' means from love that is Divine. This is clear from the meaning of 'shittim wood' as the good of merit and of righteousness, which is the Lord's alone, dealt with in 9472, 9486, 9715. The reason why love as well is meant is that when the Lord was in the world He was motivated by Divine Love to fight against all the hells and overcome them, and in so doing to save the human race, as a result of which He alone has earned merit, and has become righteousness, see 9486, 9715, 9809, 10019, 10152; and the good of merit which is the Lord's is therefore His Divine Love. The reason why 'shittim wood' has so profound a meaning is that all things which exist in earth's three kingdoms - the animal, vegetable, and mineral kingdoms - serve to mean spiritual and celestial realities, or else their opposites. (For the whole natural order is a theatre representative of the Lord's kingdom, see the places referred to in 9280.) And 'wood' means in general the good of love, and in particular the good of merit, 2784, 2812, 3720, 4943, 8354, 8740. So it is that in the highest sense 'wood' means Divine Good; for all things serving in the internal sense to mean aspects of the Church and of heaven serve in the highest sense to mean Divine realities.

10040. Since the flesh of the young bull together with its skin and dung was burned with fire outside the camp, it becomes clear that the good of love was not meant by its 'flesh' but the evil of [self] love, as accords with the things stated above in 10035 regarding its 'flesh', and in 10038 just above regarding 'the camp'. But the reason why they were allowed to eat the flesh of the sacrifice, as becomes clear from places which come further on, was that in its worship that nation was interested in the outward performance but not in anything internal, see the places referred to in 9320(end), 9380. And an outward performance devoid of anything internal is not at all holy because then it is something done merely by the body and spoken by the mouth, and the heart and soul are not in it. Nevertheless the outward performance devoid of anything internal was called holy because it represented holy and internal things, these being everything that belongs to love and faith received from the Lord and offered back to Him. Since that nation was by nature such they were not permitted to eat blood and fat, because 'blood' meant Divine Truth which composes faith, while 'fat' meant Divine Good which constitutes love, both of which are received from the Lord, see above in 10033. But they were permitted to eat the flesh of a sacrifice because this flesh meant the human proprium or selfhood, 10035; and the proprium of that nation was such that they worshipped the outward forms as being holy but made nothing whatever of their inward substance. And that worship - apart from the representative aspect of it, which was holy - was idolatrous, see 4281, 4311. Furthermore that flesh, as a representative sign, had no other meaning, when its blood represented Divine Truth and its fat Divine Good, 10033; for then that flesh represented something which was devoid of life and soul, as the outward devoid of the inward is, which is referred to as being dead and which is in keeping with the following words in Moses,

You shall not eat the blood, because the blood is the soul; and you shall not eat the soul with the flesh. Deuteronomy 12:23.

[2] The worship of the nation of the catholic religion, as it is called ¹ , is almost the same; that is to say, its worship is outward, devoid of anything inward. The common people are prevented from knowing the inner truths of the Word, because they are forbidden to read it, for which reason also it has come about in the Lord's Divine Providence that in the Holy Supper the common people are given the bread or flesh, but not the wine or blood. And yet blood is that which gives life to flesh, even as wine gives it to bread. For just as the bread without the wine provides no nourishment to the body, neither therefore does the good of love, meant by the bread and the flesh, without the truth of faith, meant by the wine and the blood, provide any nourishment to the soul. In the Lord's Divine Providence it has also come about there that the priest should drink the wine, because by this is meant nourishing the soul by means of Divine Truth devoid of the good of love, which is something outwardly holy devoid of anything inwardly so. They have no knowledge that this has happened in the Lord's Divine Providence because they venerate outward things in an idolatrous manner and so have no idea about inward things. If it had been otherwise, then not unlike the Jews they would have profaned holy things. That drinking of the wine by the priest alone is also a sign that knowledge of Divine Truth resides with priests alone and not with the common people, except so far as they are willing to give them it. Regarding the Holy Supper, that the bread and flesh in it are the Divine Good of the Lord's Divine Love towards the human race, and people's love offered back to the Lord, and that the blood and wine are the Divine Truth emanating from the Lord's Divine Good, and so the truth of faith received from the Lord and offered back to Him, see 3464, 3813, 4211, 4217, 4735, 4976, 6135, 6377, 6789, 7850, 9127.

As regards when it was that the flesh of sacrifices should be taken outside the camp to be burned with fire, see Leviticus 4:11-12, 21; and when it was, and by whom, that it should be eaten, Leviticus 6:26-30; 7:6, 15-19; 19:5-6; Deuteronomy 12:7, 17-18, 27; 27:6-7.

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