1. The Sacred Scripture, or Word, Is Divine Truth Itself

Everyone says that the Word comes from God, is Divinely inspired, and so is holy. But even so, no one has known before this wherein the Divinity in it lies. For in its letter the Word appears as though written in the ordinary way, in a foreign style, neither as sublime or nor as lucid as writings of the present age seem to be.

As a result, a person who worships nature as God, or in preference to God, and so thinks prompted by self and his own self-interest, and not prompted by heaven in response to the Lord, may easily fall into error regarding the Word, and into scorning it, and when reading it, saying to himself, “What is this? What is that? Is this Divine? Can God, whose wisdom is infinite, speak so? Where is the holiness in it, and what makes it holy, other than some teaching of religion and so conviction?”

5. 1. What the spiritual meaning is. The spiritual meaning is not the sense that shines from the literal one when one is studying the Word and interpreting it in order to confirm some dogma of the church. This sense is the Word’s literal sense. Rather its spiritual meaning is one not apparent in the literal one. The spiritual meaning lies within the literal one, like the soul within the body, like thought within the eyes, and affection within the face, which operate in concert, like cause and effect.

That spiritual meaning is what principally causes the Word to be spiritual, not only for people, but also for angels. Consequently that meaning is the means by which the Word communicates with the heavens.

46. The Word’s literal sense is symbolized by the curtains and veils of the Tabernacle. The Tabernacle represented heaven and the church. Its form was therefore shown by Jehovah on Mount Sinai. Consequently everything in the Tabernacle — the lampstand, the golden altar for incense, and the table with showbread on it — represented and so symbolized the sanctities of heaven and the church. Moreover, the most holy place, where the Ark of the Covenant was, represented and so symbolized the inmost constituent of heaven and the church; and the Law itself, written on two tables of stone and contained in the ark, symbolized the Lord in relation to the Word.

Now because outward manifestations take their essence from inner components, and both of these from the inmost one, which in this case was the Law, therefore the holy qualities of the Word were also represented and symbolized by all the constituents of the Tabernacle.

It follows from this that the outmost constituents of the Tabernacle, which were its curtains and veils, thus its coverings and enclosures, symbolized the outmost constituents of the Word, which are the truths and goods of its literal sense.

[2] Because they symbolized these outmost constituents, therefore the curtains and veils were made “of fine woven linen, and blue, purple, and scarlet double-dyed, with...cherubim” (Exodus 26:1, 31, 36).

What the Tabernacle and everything found in it represented and symbolized, in general and in particular, is something we explained in Arcana Coelestia (The Secrets of Heaven), in our treatment of this chapter in Exodus. And we showed there that the curtains and veils represented the outer constituents of heaven and the church, thus also the outer constituents of the Word. We showed, too, that the linen, or fine linen, symbolized truth from a spiritual origin; the blue, truth from a celestial origin; the purple, celestial goodness; the scarlet double-dyed, spiritual goodness; and the cherubim, protections for the Word’s inner constituents.