15. To show that the prophetic books of the Word of the Old Testament are in many places unintelligible apart from their spiritual meaning, I should like to cite just a few. This from Isaiah, for example:

Then Jehovah will rouse up a whip against Assyria, like the blow against Midian on the rock Oreb; his staff will be stretched out over the sea, and he will lift it against the way of Egypt. And it will happen on that day that his burden will depart from your shoulder and his yoke from your neck. He will come against Aiath; he will cross over into Migron. He will command his weapons against Michmash; they will cross Mabara. Gibeah will be a place of lodging for us; Ramah will tremble with fear; Gibeah of Saul will flee. Wail with your voice, daughter of Gallim! Listen to Laishah, unfortunate Anathoth! Madmenah will wander; the inhabitants of Gebim will gather together. In Nob is it still a day for standing firm? The mountain of the daughter of Zion, the hill of Jerusalem, will move its hand. Jehovah will cut down the tangled places in the forest with iron, and Lebanon will fall by means of the Mighty One. (Isaiah 10:24-34)

All we find here are names from which we can draw no sense without the aid of the spiritual meaning, in which all the names in the Word point to matters of heaven and the church. We gather from this meaning that this passage refers to the ruin of the whole church by information that corrupted every true teaching and supported every false teaching.

[2] In another passage from the same prophet,

On that day the rivalry of Ephraim will wane and the enemies of Judah will be cut off. Ephraim will not compete with Judah, and Judah will not trouble Ephraim, but they will swoop down upon the shoulder of the Philistines toward the sea. Together they will plunder the children of the east. Edom and Moab will be [subject to] the stretching out of their hand. Jehovah will curse the tongue of the sea of Egypt and will shake his hand over the river with the vehemence of his spirit; and he will strike it into seven streams, to make a pathway [that can be trodden] with sandals. Then there will be a highway for the rest of his people, the remnant from Assyria. (Isaiah 11:11, 13-16)

Here too, only those who know what these particular names mean will see anything divine, when in fact this is about the Lord’s Coming and what will happen then, as is perfectly obvious from the first ten verses of the chapter. So without the aid of the spiritual meaning, who would see what these statements in this sequence mean, namely, that if people are caught up in false beliefs because of ignorance but have not let themselves be led astray by evil tendencies, they will find their way to the Lord, and that the church will then understand the Word, so that their false beliefs will no longer harm them?

[3] It is much the same in other passages where there are no names, as in Ezekiel:

Thus says the Lord Jehovih: “Son of Humanity, say to every winged bird and to every beast of the field, ‘Gather and come. Gather yourselves from all around for my sacrifice, which I am sacrificing for you, a great sacrifice on the mountains of Israel, so that you may eat flesh and drink blood. You will eat the flesh of the mighty and drink the blood of the rulers of the earth. You will eat fat until you are full and drink blood until you are drunk, from my sacrifice, which I am sacrificing for you. At my table you will eat your fill of horses and chariots and the mighty and every man of war. This is how I will establish my glory among the nations.’” (Ezekiel 39:17-21)

If readers do not know from the spiritual sense the meaning of a sacrifice, of flesh and blood, of horses, chariots, the mighty, and men of war, all they can conclude is that they are going to eat and drink things like this. The spiritual meaning, though, tells us that eating flesh and drinking blood from a sacrifice that the Lord Jehovih offers on the mountains of Israel means taking divine goodness and divine truth into ourselves from the Word. This passage is about summoning everyone to the Lord’s kingdom, specifically the Lord’s establishment of a church among the nations. Can anyone fail to see that flesh does not mean flesh and that blood does not mean blood in this text? The same holds true for drinking blood until we are drunk and eating our fill of horses, chariots, the mighty, and every man of war.

There are passages like this in a thousand other places in the prophets.

1585. 'And he saw all the plain of Jordan' means the goods and truths that resided with the external man. This is clear from the meaning of 'a plain' and of 'the Jordan'. In the internal sense 'the plain surrounding the Jordan' means the external man as regards all his goods and truths. The reason the plain of Jordan has this meaning is that the Jordan was a boundary of the land of Canaan. 'The land of Canaan', as stated and shown already, means the Lord's kingdom and Church, and in particular its celestial and spiritual things; this also explains why it was called the Holy Land, and the heavenly Canaan. And because it means the Lord's kingdom and Church, it means in the highest sense the Lord Himself, who is the All in all of His kingdom and of His Church.

[2] For this reason all things in the land of Canaan were representative. Those in the midst of the land, or that were inmost, represented His internal Man - Mount Zion and Jerusalem, for example, representing respectively celestial things and spiritual things. More outlying districts represented things more remote from internals. And the most outlying districts, or those which formed the boundaries, represented the external man. There were several boundaries to the land of Canaan, but in general they were the two rivers Euphrates and Jordan, and also the Sea, ¹ for which reason the Euphrates and the Jordan represented external things. Here therefore 'the plain of Jordan' means, as it also represents, all things residing in the external man. The meaning of the land of Canaan is similar when used in reference to the Lord's kingdom in heaven, to the Lord's Church on earth, to the member of that kingdom or Church, or abstractly to the celestial things of love, and so on.

[3] Almost all the cities therefore, and indeed all the mountains, hills, valleys, rivers, and other features in the land of Canaan, were representative. The river Euphrates, being a boundary, represented, as shown already in 120, sensory evidence and facts that belong to the external man, and so too did the Jordan and the plain of Jordan, as becomes clear from the following places: In David,

O my God, my soul bows itself down within me; ² therefore I remember You from the land of Jordan, and the Hermons from the little mountain. Psalms 42:6.

Here 'the land of Jordan' stands for that which is lowly and so is distant from the celestial, as a person's externals are from his internals.

[4] The crossing of the Jordan when the children of Israel entered the land of Canaan and the dividing of its waters at that time also represented the approach to the internal man by way of the external, as well as a person's entry into the Lord's kingdom, and much more besides, Joshua 3:14 on to the end of Chapter 4. And because the external man is constantly hostile towards the internal and strives for domination over it, the arrogance or the pride of the Jordan came to be phrases used by the Prophets, as in Jeremiah,

How will you compete with horses? And confident in a land of peace how do you deal with the pride of the Jordan? Jeremiah 12:5.

'The pride of the Jordan' stands for those things belonging to the external man which rear up and wish to have dominion over the internal, such as reasonings, meant here by 'horses', and 'the confidence' they give.

[5] In the same prophet,

Edom will become a desolation. Behold, like a lion it will come up from the arrogance of the Jordan against the habitation of Ethan. Jeremiah 49:17, 19.

'The arrogance of the Jordan' stands for the pride of the external man against the goods and truths of the internal. In Zechariah,

Howl, O fir tree, for the cedar is fallen, for the magnificent ones have been laid waste! Howl, O oaks of Bashan, for the impenetrable forest has come down. The sound of the howling of shepherds [is heard], for their magnificence has been laid waste; the sound of the roaring of young lions, that the pride of the Jordan has been laid waste. Zechariah 11:2-3.

The fact that the Jordan was a boundary of the land of Canaan is clear from Numbers 34:12, and the eastern boundary of the land of Judah, in Joshua 15:5.

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