351. Of the tribe of Reuben twelve thousand were sealed. This symbolizes wisdom springing from celestial love in those people who will be in the New Heaven and in the Lord's New Church.

In the highest sense Reuben symbolizes omniscience; in the spiritual sense, wisdom, intelligence and knowledge, also faith; and in the natural sense, sight. Here, however, Reuben symbolizes wisdom, because he comes after Judah, who symbolizes celestial love, and celestial love produces wisdom. For there is no love without its partner, which is knowledge, intelligence, or wisdom. The partner of natural love is knowledge; that of spiritual love is intelligence; and that of celestial love is wisdom.

[2] Reuben symbolizes these three because his name was derived from a word meaning to look or see, and natural sight spiritually is knowledge, spiritual sight is intelligence, and celestial sight is wisdom.

Reuben was also Jacob's firstborn, and therefore Israel called him "my might, the beginning of my strength, excellent in eminence and excellent in valor" (Genesis 49:3). Of such a character also is wisdom springing from celestial love.

Moreover, because by virtue of his primogeniture Reuben represented and so symbolized the wisdom possessed by people of the church, therefore he urged his brothers not to kill Joseph, and he grieved when he found Joseph not in the pit (Genesis 37:21-22, 29-30).

For the same reason his tribe camped on the south side of the Tabernacle, and the tribes camped on that side were called the Camp of Reuben (Numbers 2:10-16). The south, too, symbolizes wisdom springing from love. Consequently people in heaven who have that wisdom dwell toward the south (see the book Heaven and Hell, 148-150nos. ).

This wisdom is symbolized by Reuben in the prophetic utterance of Deborah and Barak:

Among the divisions of Reuben were great resolves of heart... Why do you sit among the packs, (Issachar,) to hear the rustling of the flocks? To listen to the divisions of Reuben (where there are) great searchings of heart? (Judges 5:15-16)

The divisions of Reuben are concepts of every kind, which have to do with wisdom.

[3] Because the tribes all symbolize their opposites as well, so too does the tribe of Reuben; and in an opposite sense he symbolizes wisdom divorced from love, and thus also faith divorced from charity. Therefore his father Israel cursed him (Genesis 49:3-4). And therefore he was deprived of his primogeniture (1 Chronicles 5:1; see no. 17 above). For the same reason, too, the tribe was given an inheritance in the Trans-Jordan and not in the land of Canaan. And Ephraim and Manasseh, Joseph's sons, were acknowledged in the place of Reuben and Simeon (Genesis 48:5).

Nevertheless, he still retained the representation and consequent symbolism of wisdom.

5. And He sent and signified it by His angel to His servant John. This symbolizes the things that have been revealed by the Lord through heaven to people who possess goodness of life arising from charity and its accompanying faith.

"He sent and signified it by His angel" means, in the spiritual sense, things that have been revealed by the Lord from heaven or through heaven. For in the Word an angel frequently means the angelic heaven, and in the highest sense the Lord Himself. That is because no angel ever speaks with a person in dissociation from heaven, for each has such a conjunction with all the rest there that everyone speaks in accord with the communion, even though the angel is not conscious of it.

In the Lord's sight, in fact, heaven is as a single person, whose soul is the Lord Himself. Therefore the Lord speaks with a person through heaven, as a person does from his soul through his body in speaking with another. And this the person does in conjunction with each and every part of his mind, at whose center are the things that he is saying. But this secret cannot be explained in a few words. We have explained it in part in Angelic Wisdom Regarding Divine Love and Wisdom.

In the highest sense the Lord is meant by an angel because heaven is not heaven in consequence of the angels' own qualities, but owing to the Lord's Divinity from which they have their love and wisdom, indeed their life. It is on this account that in the Word the Lord is Himself called an angel.

It is apparent from this that the angel did not of himself speak with John, but that the Lord did so by means of heaven through the angel.

[2] As for saying that this statement means that these things have been revealed to people who possess goodness of life arising from charity and its accompanying faith, that is because it is they who are meant by John. For by the Lord's twelve disciples or apostles are meant all in the church who possess truths arising from goodness, and in an abstract sense, all constituents of the church. By Peter are meant all who are governed by faith, and abstractly, faith itself. By James are meant those who are impelled by charity, and abstractly, charity itself. And by John are meant those who possess goodness of life arising from charity and its accompanying faith, and abstractly, the resulting goodness of life itself. That these are what are meant by John, James and Peter in the Gospels may be seen in the short work The New Jerusalem and its Heavenly Doctrine (London, 1758), no. 122.

[3] Now because goodness of life arising from charity and its accompanying faith is what forms the church, therefore it was through the apostle John that secrets were revealed concerning the state of the church, the secrets that are contained in his visions.

The fact that the names of persons and places in the Word all symbolize things having to do with heaven and the church is something we showed many times in Arcana Coelestia (The Secrets of Heaven), also published in London.

It can be seen from this that the phrase, "He sent and signified it by His angel to His servant John," means, in the spiritual sense, the things that have been revealed by the Lord through heaven to people who possess goodness of life arising from charity and its accompanying faith. For charity produces goodness through faith, and not charity by itself or faith by itself.