139. Internal Meaning of Ezekiel, Chapter 16

The successive states of the Jewish church. (2)

1-2 There was nothing in it but falsity and evil. (2)

3-6 It was forsaken by the Lord from the beginning, because it was without anything of the church. (2)

7-12 After a time truths and goods of every kind and species were given to it through the Word, and thus evils and falsities were removed. (2)

13-14 Thus it could have been in intelligence. (2)

15-20 It falsified all things of the Word. (2)

21-22 It extinguished truths and goods, and became as in the beginning. (2)

23-25 It turned truths into falsities (2)

26-28 by knowledges [scientifica] of the natural man, by traditions, and by reasonings from them, (2)

29-30 finally profaning [truths]. (2)

31 It exalted itself above all men. (2)

32-34 It obtruded its falsities on others. (2)

35-42 They will utterly perish by the falsities by which the truths of the Word have been destroyed. (3)

43-45 Thus they will be as in the beginning. (3)

46-52 The like has come to pass with the Israelitish church, but in a less degree. (3, 17)

53-55 Nevertheless the church in general shall be restored. (11)

56-58 It is everywhere better than in the Jewish church. (11)

59-63 A new church is to be instituted among others. (11)

730. 17:6 And I saw the woman, drunk with the blood of the saints and with the blood of the witnesses of Jesus. This symbolizes the Roman Catholic religion irrational because of its adulterating and profaning the Divine truths and goods of the Lord, of the Word, and so of the church.

The woman symbolizes the Roman Catholic religion, as in nos. 723, 725 above. To be drunk means, symbolically, to be irrational in spiritual matters (no. 721). The blood symbolizes their falsification, adulteration and profanation of the Word (nos. 327, 379, 681, 684). Saints symbolize people who are governed by Divine truths from the Lord through the Word, and in an abstract sense the Divine truths themselves of the Lord, of the Word, and so of the church (nos. 173, 586, 664). The witnesses of Jesus symbolize in an abstract sense the truths and goods in the church from the Lord through the Word (nos. 6, 16, 490, 501, 669), here those truths and goods profaned, because the blood is called the blood of the saints and of the witnesses of Jesus, and the subject is Babylon, which also symbolizes a profanation of the goodness and truth in the Word and in the church (nos. 717, 718).

It follows from this that John's seeing the woman drunk with the blood of the saints and with the blood of the witnesses of Jesus symbolizes the Roman Catholic religion irrational because of its adulterating and profaning the Divine truths and goods of the Lord, of the Word, and so of the church.