To build something generally means to put together a variety of simpler pieces to make a useful and more complex structure, as to build a house out of wood or bricks, and it is commonly used this way in the Word. In the land of Shinar men wished to build a tower, and in the new testament Jesus advised that a wise man should build his house on a rock. But in a representative sense the meaning is to build a mental and spiritual structure, like the doctrine of a church or the individual concepts of spiritual reality in a single mind. The building materials are representative also. The tower of Babel was built of brick, which is man-made rock, or representatively, man-made "truths", that is"truths" not from God but ideas of spiritual reality thought out by men. The house that the wise man would build was founded on a natural or "God-made" rock, which means a truth from the Word.

40. That goodness loves truth and wishes to be united with it may also be illustrated by analogy with food and water or bread and wine. We have to have both. Food and bread alone are insufficient in the body for its nourishment, but must be combined with water or wine. One therefore hungers and longs for the other.

Food and bread in the Word also mean good in its spiritual sense, and water and wine mean truth.