9371. THE INTERNAL SENSE.

Verses 1-2. And He said unto Moses, Come up unto Jehovah, thou and Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel; and bow yourselves afar off; and Moses, he alone, shall come near unto Jehovah; and they shall not come near; and the people shall not come up with him. “And He said unto Moses,” signifies that which concerns the Word in general; “come up unto Jehovah,” signifies conjunction with the Lord; “thou and Aaron,” signifies the Word in the internal sense and the external sense; “Nadab and Abihu,” signifies doctrine from both senses; “and seventy of the elders of Israel,” signifies the chief truths of the church which are of the Word, or of doctrine, and which agree with good; “and bow yourselves afar off,” signifies humiliation and adoration from the heart, and then the influx of the Lord; “and Moses, he alone, shall come near unto Jehovah,” signifies the conjunction and presence of the Lord through the Word in general; “and they shall not come near,” signifies no separate conjunction and presence; “and the people shall not come up with him,” signifies no conjunction whatever with the external apart from the internal.

8778. 'And Moses brought back the people's words to Jehovah' means correspondence and being joined together. This is clear from the meaning of 'bringing words back to Jehovah' as correspondence and consequently being joined together. For the subject is the covenant that is to be made with the people; and since covenants are made through agreement on both sides, something that resembles the making of a covenant takes place here. That is to say, Jehovah proposes and the people respond, at this point through Moses, who represents the truth from God when it has been joined to Divine Truth as it exists in heaven, 8760, which is intermediary. But the only way that the covenant is made with mankind is through being receptive of the influx of truth from the Divine, and through correspondence at that time; for when higher things flow into lower they are not received in any other way.

[2] What correspondence and receptivity through correspondence are becomes clear from what has been shown at the ends of quite a number of chapters regarding the correspondence of all things present in the human being with the things that exist in heaven. It has also been shown in those places that all joining of natural things to spiritual ones, and in general of lower things to higher ones, is accomplished through correspondence. Such correspondence does not exist unless the lower things are placed in subordinate positions and made subject to the higher ones; and when the lower have been made subject, the higher ones act on them altogether as a cause does on its effect. From all this one may see what reciprocity on man's side is when the Divine flows in, and what the consequent joining together is, which is described in the sense of the letter here by the method used to make covenants, which is that Jehovah speaks to the people through a messenger, and the messenger brings their reply back to Jehovah. For this is how a person can grasp the concept of being joined to the Divine.