A congregation is a group of people with common loves, interests, and purposes. It often refers to a church group. In the Word it is almost always used to speak of the whole group of the Children of Israel, as the tabernacle of the congregation, or the people of the congregation. Sometimes the original Hebrew is translated as assembly, too. This is a case where readers and translators need to be aware of the context and potential nuances of meaning. Swedenborg writes that,'The congregation of the people' stands for people who are ruled by truths constituting intelligence, since 'congregation' is used with reference to truths... as also is 'people'... 'the assembly of the old' stands for people who are ruled by good. The usage of the term congregation also implies an ordering, or arrangement of truths.

(რეკომენდაციები: Apocalypse Explained 417; Arcana Coelestia 6338, 7843, 7891; The Apocalypse Explained 724 [17])

2020. 'Throughout their generations' means the things that comprise faith. This is clear from the meaning of 'generations' as those things that are begotten and born from charity, that is, all things comprising faith, or what amounts to the same, all people who have been regenerated by the Lord, thus those with whom the faith inhering in charity is present. This will be discussed in the Lord's Divine mercy later on. That in the internal sense generations and also nativities have this meaning has been shown in Volume One, in 613, 1041, 1145, 1330.