543. She bore a male Child. (12:5) This symbolizes the doctrine of the New Church.
A son in the Word symbolizes doctrinal truth, and also an understanding of and consequent thought about truth and goodness. A daughter, on the other hand, symbolizes the goodness taught by doctrine, and also a willing of and consequent affection for truth and goodness. A male child, moreover, symbolizes truth conceived in the spiritual self and born in the natural one.
The reason for this is that generations and births in the Word symbolize spiritual generations and births, all of which relate in general to goodness and truth (no. 535). For nothing else is begotten and born of the Lord as husband and of the church as wife.
Now because the woman who bore the child symbolizes the New Church (no. 533), it is apparent that the male child symbolizes that church's doctrine.
The doctrine meant here is The New Jerusalem and its Heavenly Doctrine (London, 1758), and also The Doctrine of the New Jerusalem Regarding the Lord, The Doctrine of the New Jerusalem Regarding the Sacred Scripture, and The Doctrine of Life for the New Jerusalem in Accordance With the Ten Commandments (Amsterdam, 1763). For doctrine means all the truths of doctrine, since doctrine embraces them all. When I was writing these doctrines, followers of the dragon stood about me and with all their fury endeavored to devour them, that is, to extinguish them.
I am permitted to report this new information, because of a truth it happened as I have said. The followers of the dragon who stood about me came from all over the Protestant Reformed Christian world.
[2] Since these and no other are the offspring born of the spiritual marriage, and male offspring are truth and good in the intellect and consequent thought, while female offspring are truth and good in the will and consequent affection, therefore a son in the Word symbolizes truth. To confirm this we will cite some passages from which it can in some measure be seen:
Behold, sons are a heritage from Jehovah, the fruit of the womb is a reward. Like arrows in the hand of a mighty man, so are the sons of one's youth. (Psalms 127:3-5)
Make yourself bald and shave yourself, because of your delightful sons..., for they are gone from you. (Micah 1:16)
(I saw two olive trees beside the lampstand,) and he said, "These are the two sons of the olive tree, who stand beside the Lord of the whole earth." (Zechariah 4:11, 14)
My tent is destroyed...; my sons have gone from me, and they are no more. (Jeremiah 10:20)
My sons are made desolate because the enemy prevailed. (Lamentations 1:16)
Your sons, (O Jerusalem,) have fainted, they lie at the head of all the streets... (Isaiah 51:17-18, 20)
...fathers shall eat their sons in the midst of you, and sons shall eat their fathers..., and all of you who remain I will scatter to all the winds. (Ezekiel 5:10)
Son will be divided against father, and father against son... (Luke 12:53, cf. Matthew 10:21, Mark 13:12)
You have also taken your beautiful vessels of My gold... and made for yourself male images with which you played the harlot. (Ezekiel 16:17)
(Jesus said,) ...the... seeds are the children of the kingdom, but the tares are the children of evil. (Matthew 13:38)
[3] That the Son of Man is the Divine truth in the Word, thus the Lord, may be seen in The Doctrine of the New Jerusalem Regarding the Lord, nos. 19-28.
In the passages cited, sons mean people who possess doctrinal truths drawn from the Word, and abstractly, those truths themselves. So, too, elsewhere, as in Isaiah 13:17-18; 14:21-23; 43:6; 49:17, 22; 51:17-18; 60:9; Deuteronomy 32:8.
That daughters symbolize an affection for the church's truth, thus the church in relation to that affection, follows from so many passages in the Word that if I were to quote them, they would fill many pages. Nothing else is meant by daughter of Zion, daughter of Jerusalem, daughter of Judah, and daughter of Israel. See some passages cited in no. 612[1-4] regarding the daughter of Zion. Who cannot see that no actual daughter of Zion, of Jerusalem, of Judah or of Israel, so often mentioned in the Word, can be meant?
