At face value, the Ten Commandments can seem intense and unforgiving. But Emanuel Swedenborg’s understanding of the internal sense of the Bible—spiritual meanings that lie beneath the literal words—can give us a new perspective on these familiar rules.

In this episode of their Swedenborg and Life web series, hosts Curtis Childs and Jonathan Rose study the inner meaning of the first commandment.

(References: Apocalypse Revealed 950; Arcana Coelestia 8864, 8865, 8868, 8869, 8875, 8878, 8879, 8880, 8881)

43. I will touch, in a few words, upon the manner in which the representative Church with them was turned into an idolatrous one: All the spiritual things which are of heaven and the Church were presented before them in visible and tangible images, as was mentioned just above; those images were taken from the subjects of the three kingdoms of nature, animal, vegetable and mineral, by which were represented such things as are of the heavenly kingdom. They placed these typical images in their sanctuaries, in the inner chambers of their houses, and in the market-places and streets, arranging them according to their significations. But after the knowledge of correspondences was lost, and consequently the discernment of the signification of those images had perished, a later posterity began to look upon and acknowledge them as so many Divine and holy things; and then to some they bowed the knee, some they kissed, and some they adorned and decorated with necklaces, boxes of perfumes and anklets, just as children do their dolls, and as papists do their images; yea, of some they made household gods, of some guardian demigods, and of some Pythons; some, moreover, they carried in miniature forms in their hands, some they hugged in their bosoms, stroked, and whispered petitions in their ears; and so on. Thus were heavenly types turned into infernal types, and the Divine things of heaven and the Church into idols. On account of this transformation and distortion of heavenly things, a new representative Church was raised up among the sons of Israel, in which genuine representations, as was stated above, were instituted; and to which it was forbidden to celebrate Divine worship by any others, as is evident from these words in the first Commandment of the Decalogue:

Thou shalt not make unto thee a graven image, nor any figure that is in the heavens above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the waters under the earth. Thou shalt not bow down thyself unto them, nor worship them (Exod. 20:4-5; Deut. 5:8-9).