9371. THE INTERNAL SENSE.

Verses 1-2. And He said unto Moses, Come up unto Jehovah, thou and Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel; and bow yourselves afar off; and Moses, he alone, shall come near unto Jehovah; and they shall not come near; and the people shall not come up with him. “And He said unto Moses,” signifies that which concerns the Word in general; “come up unto Jehovah,” signifies conjunction with the Lord; “thou and Aaron,” signifies the Word in the internal sense and the external sense; “Nadab and Abihu,” signifies doctrine from both senses; “and seventy of the elders of Israel,” signifies the chief truths of the church which are of the Word, or of doctrine, and which agree with good; “and bow yourselves afar off,” signifies humiliation and adoration from the heart, and then the influx of the Lord; “and Moses, he alone, shall come near unto Jehovah,” signifies the conjunction and presence of the Lord through the Word in general; “and they shall not come near,” signifies no separate conjunction and presence; “and the people shall not come up with him,” signifies no conjunction whatever with the external apart from the internal.

7891. And there shall be to you in the first day a holy convocation. That this signifies that in the beginning all shall be together, is evident from the signification of “the first day,” as being the beginning, namely, of liberation from those who have infested, and thus from damnation; and from the signification of “a holy convocation,” as being that all shall be together. Convocations took place in order that the whole assemblage of Israel might be together, and might thus represent heaven; for they were then all distinguished into tribes, and the tribes into families, and the families into houses. (That heaven along with the societies there was represented by the tribes, the families, and the houses of the sons of Israel, see n. 7836.) Therefore those convocations were called holy, and took place at every feast (Leviticus 23:27, 36; Numbers 28:26; 29:1, 7, 12). From this the feasts themselves were called “holy convocations,” for it was commanded that all the males should be present at them. That the feasts were called “holy convocations” is evident in Moses:

These are the set feasts of Jehovah, which ye shall call holy convocations, to offer a fire-offering unto Jehovah (Leviticus 23:37).

That at such times all males were to be present, in the same:

Three times in a year shall every male of thine appear together before Jehovah thy God, in the place which He shall choose; in the feast of unleavened things, and in the feast of weeks, and in the feast of tabernacles (Deuteronomy 16:16).

5915. And I will sustain thee there. That this signifies continuous influx of spiritual life from the internal celestial, is evident from the signification of “sustaining,” when it is said by Joseph, by whom is represented the internal celestial, as being the influx of spiritual life from the internal celestial; sustenance in the spiritual sense being nothing else than the influx of good and of truth through heaven from the Lord. From this are the angels sustained, and from this is the soul of man (that is, his internal man) sustained. To this sustenance corresponds the sustenance of the external man by food and drink; and therefore by “food” is signified good, and by “drink,” truth. Such also is the correspondence, that when a man is partaking of food, the angels with him are in the idea of good and truth, and wonderful to say with a difference according to the species of the food. Thus when a man in the Holy Supper receives the bread and the wine, the angels with him are in the idea of the good of love and the good of faith (n. 3464, 3735), for the reason that bread corresponds to the good of love, and wine to the good of faith; and because they correspond, they also signify the same in the Word.

[2] That man’s soul (that is, the internal man) is sustained by spiritual food and drink, that is, by good and truth, is evident from the Lord’s words in Moses:

Man doth not live by bread only, but by every utterance of the mouth of Jehovah doth man live (Deuteronomy 8:3; Matthew 4:4).

The “utterance of the mouth of Jehovah” is the good and the truth which proceed from Him.

In John:

Labor not for the food which perisheth, but for the food which remaineth into eternal life, which the Son of man will give you (John 6:27).

Again:

The disciples besought Jesus, saying, Master, eat. He said to them, I have food to eat that ye know not (John 4:31-32).

And concerning drink, in the same:

Jesus said, If anyone thirst, let him come unto me and drink; whosoever believeth in Me, as the Scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow streams of living water (John 7:37-38).