1. THE BOOK OF GENESIS

The Word of the Old Testament contains heavenly arcana, with every single detail focusing on the Lord, His heaven, the Church, faith, and what belongs to faith; but no human being grasps this from the letter. Judging it by the letter or sense of the letter, nobody views it as anything more than a record, in the main, of external features of the Jewish Church. Yet at every point there are internal features that are nowhere evident in the external, apart from the very few which the Lord revealed and explained to the Apostles, such as that sacrifices mean the Lord; that the land of Canaan and Jerusalem mean heaven, which is therefore called Canaan and the heavenly Jerusalem; and that Paradise is similar in meaning.

692. CHAPTER 7

HELL

Just as man's idea of heaven is very general, so hazy as to be almost none at all, so too is his idea of hell. He is like hut-dwellers in a forest who can have a mental picture of the world beyond, but do not know of its empires or kingdoms, still less its forms of government, and even less the communities or life of those communities. Until they know these things their idea of the world is bound to be very general, such as to be scarcely any at all. The same applies to man's ideas of heaven and of hell. Yet there are countless phenomena in both places, infinitely more than those existing on any planet. How countless they are becomes clear from the mere consideration that just as nobody ever has in mind exactly the same heaven as anybody else, so nobody ever has in mind exactly the same hell. And yet all souls who have ever lived in the world since creation began go to those places and are gathered together.

1767. ¹ Genesis 15

SACRED SCRIPTURE, OR THE WORD, AND HOW IT CONCEALS WITHIN ITSELF DIVINE MATTERS WHICH ARE FULLY VISIBLE TO GOOD SPIRITS AND TO ANGELS

When the Word of the Lord is being read by someone who loves the Word and leads a charitable life - even by one who, because he is simple-hearted, believes what is written and has not formed opinions that are contrary to the truth of faith that lies within the internal sense - the Lord also sets the Word before the angels. The Lord does so in such beauty and such loveliness, using representatives as well, with indescribable variations, each of which accords with the angels' entire state at the time, that every detail is perceived as if it had life. This life is that which is present within the Word and from which the Word was given birth when it was sent down from heaven. By reason of this, although in the letter it appears rough and imperfect, the Word of the Lord is such that inwardly there are concealed spiritual and celestial things, which are fully visible to good spirits and to angels while it is being read by man.

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