Apocalypse Revealed #573
573. Whose feet were like those of a bear. This symbolically means, full of misconceptions taken from the literal sense of the Word, read but not understood.
Feet symbolize the natural support which is the basis on which the heresy meant by the leopard rests and, so to speak, propels itself, and that support is the literal sense of the Word. A bear symbolizes people who read the Word but fail to understand it, so that they derive from it misconceptions.
That these are the people symbolized by bears became apparent to me from seeing bears in the spiritual world, and from seeing some people there wearing bearskins. They were all people who read the Word and did not see any doctrinal truth in it. They were also people who affirmed the appearances of truth there, resulting in misconceptions.
Some bears seen in the spiritual world are dangerous and some are not, and some also are white, but they are told apart by their heads. Bears that are not dangerous have heads like those of calves or sheep.
Bears symbolize people and things like this in the following passages:
A bear lying in wait for me has overturned my paths, a lion in hidden places has corrupted my ways... He has made me desolate. (Lamentations 3:9-11)
I will meet them like a bereaved bear..., and there I will devour them like a savage lion. The wild beast of the field shall rend them. (Hosea 13:8)
...there shall lie down... the calf and the young lion... The heifer and the bear shall graze. (Isaiah 11:6-7)
(The second beast that came up from the sea was) like a bear... and had three ribs in its mouth between its teeth. (Daniel 7:5)
The lion and bear that David smote, catching the lion by its beard (1 Samuel 17:34-37), have a similar symbolic meaning. So, too, in 2 Samuel 17:8.
[2] A lion and a bear are mentioned in these places because a lion symbolizes falsity destroying the Word's truths, and a bear symbolizes misconceptions that destroy them also, but not to the same degree. Thus we are told in Amos:
...the day of Jehovah...(a day of) darkness, and not light. It is as if one who flees from a lion comes upon a bear. (Amos 5:18-19)
In the second book of Kings we read that Elisha was mocked by some boys and called a baldhead, and that forty-two boys were therefore torn apart by two female bears from the woods (2 Kings 2:23-24). This occurred because Elisha represented the Lord in respect to the Word (no. 298), because baldness symbolized the Word without its literal sense, thus having no reality (no. 47), because the number forty-two symbolized blasphemy (no. 583), and because female bears symbolized the literal sense of the Word read indeed, but not understood.
約伯記 20
2
我心中急躁,所以我的思念叫我回答。
7
他終必滅亡,像自己的糞一樣;素來見他的人要說:他在哪裡呢?
9
親眼見過他的,必不再見他;他的本處也再見不著他。
13
愛戀不捨,含在口中;
14
他的食物在肚裡卻要化為酸,在他裡面成為虺蛇的惡毒。
18
他勞碌得來的要賠還,不得享用(原文是吞下);不能照所得的財貨歡樂。
19
他欺壓窮人,且又離棄;強取非自己所蓋的房屋(或譯:強取房屋不得再建造)。
20
他因貪而無厭,所喜悅的連一樣也不能保守。
21
其餘的沒有一樣他不吞滅,所以他的福樂不能長久。
22
他在滿足有餘的時候,必到狹窄的地步;凡受苦楚的人都必加手在他身上。
23
他正要充滿肚腹的時候,神必將猛烈的忿怒降在他身上;正在他吃飯的時候,要將這忿怒像雨降在他身上。
25
他把箭一抽,就從他身上出來;發光的箭頭從他膽中出來,有驚惶臨在他身上。
26
他的財寶歸於黑暗;人所不吹的火要把他燒滅,要把他帳棚中所剩下的燒燬。
28
他的家產必然過去;神發怒的日子,他的貨物都要消滅。