10584. 'And I will take My palm away, and you will see My back parts; and My face will not be seen' means that they would see the external things of the Word, the Church, and worship, but not the internal. This is clear from the meaning of 'Jehovah's back parts' as the external things of the Word, the Church, and worship, dealt with below; and from the meaning of 'Jehovah's face' as the internal ones, dealt with above in 10578. Consequently 'seeing Jehovah's back parts and not His face' means seeing the external things of the Word, the Church, and worship, and not the internal. The fact that the Israelite and Jewish nation was like this, and still is at the present day, has been shown in all that has gone before in the present chapter and the one before it.

[2] The reason why the external things of the Word, the Church, and worship are meant by 'Jehovah's back parts' is that internal things are meant by 'the face', 10578. And people are said 'to see Jehovah's back parts and not His face' when they believe and revere the Word, yet no more than what is external, that is, the literal sense. They do not go more deeply into it in the way that those who have been enlightened do, deriving religious teachings from the Word which enable them to see its true meaning, thus its inner one.

The Word cannot be understood without religious teachings, and teachings drawn from the Word by one who has been enlightened must serve the understanding as a lamp, see 9382, 9409, 9410, 9424, 9430, 10105, 10324, 10400, 10431. The internal sense of the Word provides those teachings, 9430.

From all this it may be recognized what 'seeing Jehovah's back parts and not His face' means.

[3] But those who have no belief in the Word do not even see Jehovah's back parts; instead they turn themselves around, away from Jehovah, and see only themselves and the world. These are the ones who are meant in the Word by those who are said to turn their back parts towards the temple and worship the sun, of whom Ezekiel says,

I was brought into the court of Jehovah's house, and behold, twenty-five men, whose back parts were towards Jehovah's temple, and their faces towards the east; and the same bowed down towards the rising of the sun. Ezekiel 8:16.

By 'the sun and its rising' one should understand the sun in the world and its rising there, and by that sun self-love is meant, which is the complete opposite of love to the Lord. This is why in angels' ways of thinking the sun of the world is presented as something in complete obscurity, behind the back, whereas the Lord, who is the Sun of heaven, is before the face, see 7078. Regarding these people it is said that they turn their back parts towards the temple, and also - in Jeremiah - that they go backwards,

You have forsaken Jehovah, you have gone backwards. Jeremiah 15:6.

And elsewhere in the same prophet,

They went away in the obstinacy of their evil heart, and went ¹ backwards but not forwards. Jeremiah 7:24.

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