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.

The works of Swedenborg offer different takes on the phrase "the Son of God," sometimes saying that it refers to the "divine human" and sometimes saying it refers to the "divine truth." That seems confusing, but that problem is largely with the way we tend to think about truth or true ideas. Generally, when asked to think of the "truth," people will think of written rules like the 10 commandments, or logical proofs, or mathematical equations that are undeniably accurate. But that is really only a very external idea of truth. Consider: We've all had the experience of struggling to understand something, blundering along as someone tries to explain it. Then, all of a sudden, it clicks. You see the pattern, see the logic, see the whole picture. In an instant, you go from "not getting it" to "getting it." But how easy is it to put that "it" into words? Usually not easy at all. And it's not easy to draw in a picture, or express in an equation. But it's very real -- in a way all the more real, because it expresses something deeper. In a sense, then, the divine truth really is the divine human. When we get "it," we see Him as the infinite human, and everything we could ever know is there. Take that click, that "it" that you suddenly got and multiply it by a factor of infinity, and that's where divine truth is. Imagine if in a click you could "get" God that way -- the whole picture, the purposes, the plans, the love, the patience, the forgiveness, the ebb and flow running constantly and completely with everyone on earth. That click would be a glimpse at divine truth -- a blinding snapshot moment seeing all that God is.