1588. Like the garden of Jehovah. That this signifies its rational things, is evident from the signification of “the garden of Jehovah,” as being intelligence (see n. 100), and consequently the rational, which is the medium between the internal and the external man. The rational is the intelligence of the external man. The expression “garden of Jehovah” is used when the rational is celestial, that is, from a celestial origin, as it was with the Most Ancient Church, concerning which in Isaiah:

Jehovah will comfort Zion; He will comfort all her waste places, and will make her wilderness as Eden, and her desert as the garden of Jehovah; joy and gladness shall be found in her, confession and the voice of a song (Isaiah 51:3).

But the expression “garden of God” is used when the rational is spiritual, that is, from a spiritual origin, as it was in the Ancient Church, spoken of in Ezekiel:

Full of wisdom, and perfect in beauty, thou hast been in Eden the garden of God (Ezekiel 28:12-13).

Man’s rational is compared to a “garden,” from the representative that is presented in heaven; it is man’s rational that appears as a garden when the celestial spiritual flows into it from the Lord; and even paradises are from this presented to the sight, which in magnificence and beauty surpass every idea of human imagination, which is the effect of the influx of celestial spiritual light from the Lord (spoken of before, n. 1042, 1043). The pleasant and the beautiful things of these paradises are not what affect the beholder, but the celestial spiritual things that live in them.