The heart means love. A good heart means love to the Lord and to the neighbor, while a hard or stony heart means the love of self or the world -- riches and things. When the psalmist asks the Lord to search his heart, he wants the Lord to see what it is that he loves. And we are what we love. What we eat may form our earthly body, but it's only temporary, what we love forms our spiritual body, beautiful or ugly as we have chosen. It's interesting to note that the first multi-cellular motion of our embryo is the pulsating that starts in a twist of blood vessel that is to become our heart, and the last motion of our natural body is our heartbeat. It is there for all of our natural life. And of course there is a beating heart in our spiritual bodies when we come to put them on.

4477. 'And Hamor came, then Shechem his son, to the gate of their city' means the goods and truths of the Church among the Ancients which lay within their doctrine. This is clear from the representation of 'Hamor' as the good of the Church among the Ancients, dealt with in 4447; from the representation of 'Shechem' as the truth springing from that good, dealt with in 4454; and from the meaning of 'the gate of the city' as the doctrine of truth, dealt with in 2943.