The 23rd Psalm is one of the best-known and most-loved literary works in the world, and it may well be the best poem ever written. It is also a fine example of the power of figurative language: We read deep things into the vision of ourselves as sheep, led to green pastures and good water by a kind shepherd. It’s empowering to feel the confidence to go fearlessly into the valley of the shadow of death, and to feel the love and caring of a table prepared by the Lord and a cup so full it overflows.

What people don’t know, however, is that this language actually has precise internal meanings, and that when we see them there is an even deeper beauty in the poem. That’s because what it actually describes is the path to heaven, and the fierce desire the Lord has to lead us there.

The first step is to let the Lord be our shepherd – to accept His teaching and His leadership. The green pastures and the still waters represent the things He will teach us for the journey. Then He begins working inside is, setting our spiritual lives in order, so that we desire to do what’s good and to love one another. That’s represented by restoring our souls and leading us in the paths of righteousness.

But we will still face challenges. We still live external lives, out in the world, and we are subject to desires that arise in those externals, in our bodily lives. That’s the valley of the shadow of death. But the rod and staff represent truth from the Lord on both external and internal levels, ideas that can defend us against those desires.

And if we keep following, the Lord will prepare a table for us – a place inside us that he can fill with love (the anointing oil) and wisdom (the overflowing cup). Thus transformed, we can enter heaven, with love for others (“goodness”) and love from the Lord (“mercy”) and can love and be loved to eternity.

One of many beautiful things about this is the fact that it is the Lord who really does all the work. In the whole text, the only action taken by the sheep is walking through the valley of the shadow of death. Other than that, they follow the Lord, trust the Lord, accept the blessings of the Lord. And that is really true! In external states (in the valley) we might seem to be doing the work ourselves, but internally, spiritually, we simply need to give ourselves to the Lord and let Him bless us.

The underlying idea here is that the Lord created us so that He could love us, in loving us wants us to be happy, knows that our greatest happiness will come from being conjoined to Him in heaven, and Himself wants nothing more than to be conjoined to us. So everything He does, in every moment of every day for every person on the face of the planet, is centered on the goal of getting that person to heaven. He wants each and every one of us in heaven more than we are capable of imagining. We just need to cooperate.

(Notae: Apocalypse Explained 375 [34], 727 [2]; The Inner Meaning of the Prophets and Psalms 273)

1585. 'And he saw all the plain of Jordan' means the goods and truths that resided with the external man. This is clear from the meaning of 'a plain' and of 'the Jordan'. In the internal sense 'the plain surrounding the Jordan' means the external man as regards all his goods and truths. The reason the plain of Jordan has this meaning is that the Jordan was a boundary of the land of Canaan. 'The land of Canaan', as stated and shown already, means the Lord's kingdom and Church, and in particular its celestial and spiritual things; this also explains why it was called the Holy Land, and the heavenly Canaan. And because it means the Lord's kingdom and Church, it means in the highest sense the Lord Himself, who is the All in all of His kingdom and of His Church.

[2] For this reason all things in the land of Canaan were representative. Those in the midst of the land, or that were inmost, represented His internal Man - Mount Zion and Jerusalem, for example, representing respectively celestial things and spiritual things. More outlying districts represented things more remote from internals. And the most outlying districts, or those which formed the boundaries, represented the external man. There were several boundaries to the land of Canaan, but in general they were the two rivers Euphrates and Jordan, and also the Sea, ¹ for which reason the Euphrates and the Jordan represented external things. Here therefore 'the plain of Jordan' means, as it also represents, all things residing in the external man. The meaning of the land of Canaan is similar when used in reference to the Lord's kingdom in heaven, to the Lord's Church on earth, to the member of that kingdom or Church, or abstractly to the celestial things of love, and so on.

[3] Almost all the cities therefore, and indeed all the mountains, hills, valleys, rivers, and other features in the land of Canaan, were representative. The river Euphrates, being a boundary, represented, as shown already in 120, sensory evidence and facts that belong to the external man, and so too did the Jordan and the plain of Jordan, as becomes clear from the following places: In David,

O my God, my soul bows itself down within me; ² therefore I remember You from the land of Jordan, and the Hermons from the little mountain. Psalms 42:6.

Here 'the land of Jordan' stands for that which is lowly and so is distant from the celestial, as a person's externals are from his internals.

[4] The crossing of the Jordan when the children of Israel entered the land of Canaan and the dividing of its waters at that time also represented the approach to the internal man by way of the external, as well as a person's entry into the Lord's kingdom, and much more besides, Joshua 3:14 on to the end of Chapter 4. And because the external man is constantly hostile towards the internal and strives for domination over it, the arrogance or the pride of the Jordan came to be phrases used by the Prophets, as in Jeremiah,

How will you compete with horses? And confident in a land of peace how do you deal with the pride of the Jordan? Jeremiah 12:5.

'The pride of the Jordan' stands for those things belonging to the external man which rear up and wish to have dominion over the internal, such as reasonings, meant here by 'horses', and 'the confidence' they give.

[5] In the same prophet,

Edom will become a desolation. Behold, like a lion it will come up from the arrogance of the Jordan against the habitation of Ethan. Jeremiah 49:17, 19.

'The arrogance of the Jordan' stands for the pride of the external man against the goods and truths of the internal. In Zechariah,

Howl, O fir tree, for the cedar is fallen, for the magnificent ones have been laid waste! Howl, O oaks of Bashan, for the impenetrable forest has come down. The sound of the howling of shepherds [is heard], for their magnificence has been laid waste; the sound of the roaring of young lions, that the pride of the Jordan has been laid waste. Zechariah 11:2-3.

The fact that the Jordan was a boundary of the land of Canaan is clear from Numbers 34:12, and the eastern boundary of the land of Judah, in Joshua 15:5.

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