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.

491. The same things are signified by “sons” and “daughters” in this chapter (verses 4, 7, 10, 13, 16, 19, 26, 30), but such as is the church, such are the “sons and daughters” that is, such are the goods and truths; the truths and goods here spoken of are such as were distinctly perceived, because they are predicated of the Most Ancient Church, the principal and parent of all the other and succeeding churches.

4593. 'And Rachel died, and was buried on the way to Ephrath' means the end of the initial affection for interior truth. This is clear from the meaning of 'dying' as ceasing to be as previously, dealt with in 494, and so the end; from the representation of 'Rachel' as the affection for interior truth, dealt with in 3758, 3782, 3793, 3819; from the meaning of 'being buried' as the casting aside of the initial state and the raising up of a new one, dealt with in 2916, 2917, 3256; and from the meaning of 'Ephrath' as the spiritual of the celestial in the initial state, dealt with in 4585. From this it is evident that 'Rachel died and was buried on the way to Ephrath' means the end of the initial affection for interior truth and the raising up of a new one meant by 'Bethlehem', dealt with below in the next paragraph.

[2] In the genuine sense 'Rachel died and was buried on the way to Ephrath' means that an inherited characteristic was cast out for ever by means of temptations, that characteristic being the human affection for interior truth, cast out by the Divine affection. This also explains why this son was called Ben-oni, or Son of pain, by his mother, but Benjamin, or Son of the right hand, by his father. Present in the human affection derived from the mother there is a hereditary characteristic that holds evil within it, whereas in the Divine affection nothing but good is present. In the human affection there is a self-concern which has the glory of self and the world as the end in view, but in the Divine affection a self-concern exists that it should effect the salvation of the human race, as accords with the Lord's words in John,

I pray for those whom You have given Me, for all things that are Mine are Yours, and Yours are Mine; but I am glorified in them; that they may all be one, as You, Father, are in Me and I in You, that they may also be one in Us. The glory which You have given Me I have given to them that they may be one even as We are one, I in them and You in Me. John 17:9-10, 21-23.