Commentary

 

Born

  
Visit at the Nursery, by Jean-Honoré Fragonard

In a general sense, being "born" in the Bible represents one spiritual state producing another, usually some form of love or affection producing or "giving birth" to truth or to desires for good. This is not hard to see: If you love someone, that love naturally gives birth to ideas on how to be good to that person and make him or her happy. This is why sons and daughters in the Bible represent true ideas and desires for good. On a higher level, though, being born represents what the Writings call "regeneration," or the life-long process of putting off our natural thoughts and desires and embracing spiritual life from the Lord. This is what the Bible means when it talks about being "born again" – if we live our lives from the Lord, He will eventually take away our evil desires so that we can be "born" as angels in heaven, free of evil desires and dark thoughts. Of course, these two levels of meaning are really one: The Lord is love itself, and if we align with Him we become forms of love and truth ourselves, expressions of His love just as the desire to do something good might be the expression of your love for a friend.

From Swedenborg's Works

 

Arcana Coelestia #1803

Study this Passage

  
/ 10837  
  

1803. 'But he who comes out of your own loins' means those in whom love to Him and love towards the neighbour are present. This is clear from the meaning of 'the loins', and of 'going out of the loins' as being born, here those who are being born from the Lord. People who are being born from the Lord, that is, being regenerated by Him, are receiving the Lord's life. As has been stated, the Lord's life is Divine love, that is, a love towards the entire human race, which love is such that His will is to bring eternal salvation, if possible, to the whole of it, that is, to all men. People who do not possess the Lord's love, that is, who do not love their neighbour as themselves, in no sense possess the Lord's life, and so are not in any sense born from Him, that is, they have not 'come out of His loins', and consequently cannot be heirs of His kingdom.

[2] From these considerations it is clear that 'going out of the loins' here means in the internal sense people in whom love to the Lord and love towards the neighbour are present, as in Isaiah,

Thus said Jehovah, your Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel, I am Jehovah your God, teaching you to profit, making you go in the way you should walk. O that you had hearkened to My commandments! Then your peace would have been like a river and your righteousness like the waves of the sea; and your seed would have been like the sand, and those who have gone out of your loins like its grains. Isaiah 48:17-19.

'Seed like the sand' stands for good, 'those who have gone out of your loins like its grains' for truth. Thus it stands for people in whom love is present, for with them alone does a love of good and truth exist.

[3] In addition the loins in the Word also mean love or mercy, the reason being that the generative organs, especially the mother's womb, represent and so mean chaste conjugial love and the love of children which is derived from that love, as in Isaiah,

The yearning of Your loins and of Your compassion 1 towards me have held themselves back. Isaiah 63:15.

In Jeremiah,

Is not Ephraim a precious son to Me? Is he not a delightful child? Therefore My loins are troubled for him, I will surely have mercy on him. Jeremiah 31:20.

[4] From this it is clear that love itself, or the Lord's mercy itself and compassion towards the human race, are what the internal sense means by 'the loins', and by 'going out of the loins'. Consequently 'those who have gone out of the loins' means people in whom love is present. Concerning the Lord's kingdom as mutual love, see what has appeared already in 548, 549, 684, 693, 694

Footnotes:

1. literally, compassions

  
/ 10837  
  

Thanks to the Swedenborg Society for the permission to use this translation.