5757. 'We brought back to you from the land of Canaan' means has been submitted, as the result of religious belief. This is clear from the meaning of 'bringing back' as submitting, dealt with in 5624, and from the meaning of 'the land of Canaan' as their religious belief. 'The land of Canaan' has various meanings, and this is because it is the kind of thing that includes very many meanings. It means the Lord's kingdom and it means the Church, as a consequence of which it also means the member of the Church, for he is a Church. Having these meanings that land also means the celestial element of the Church, which is the good of love, and the spiritual element of it too, which is the truth of faith; and so on. Here therefore a religious belief which the Church possesses is meant; for the Church's religious belief is what causes a person to think that he should not lay claim to truth and good as his own. From this one may see why a single expression sometimes has many meanings; for when many meanings are included within an overall one, an expression can then convey a particular meaning as the train of thought in the internal sense may demand. As regards 'the land of Canaan' meaning the Lord's kingdom, see 1413, 1437, 1607, 3038, 3481, 3705; and as regards its meaning the Church, 3686, 3705, 4447. All the other meanings which that expression possesses flow from these two.

1437. 'They came out to go into the land of Canaan' means that in this manner He drew closer to the celestial things of love. This is clear from the meaning of 'the land of Canaan'. That 'the land of Canaan' represents the Lord's kingdom in heaven and on earth becomes clear from many things in the Word. The reason it does so is that the representative Church was established in that land, a Church in which every single thing represented the Lord and the celestial and spiritual things of His kingdom. This applied not only to religious observances but also to everything associated with those observances - to both the persons who ministered and to the things they administered, and even to the places where the ministrations took place because the representative Church was centred there the land was consequently called 'the Holy Land', even though it was anything but holy, seeing that idolaters and profaners inhabited it. This then is the reason why 'the land of Canaan' here and in what follows means the celestial things of love Indeed the celestial things of love, these alone, exist in the Lord's kingdom and constitute that kingdom