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.

1889. It is similar in this chapter with the names Abram, Sarai, Hagar, and Ishmael. What these include within themselves becomes clear from the Contents and after that from the explanation of each name in what follows. They are however things such as cannot be explained easily and intelligibly, for the subject covered by those names is the Lord's Rational - how it was conceived and born, and the nature of it before it had been united to the Lord's Internal, which was Jehovah. The reason this cannot be explained easily and intelligibly is that people at the present day do not know what the internal man is, what the interior man is, or what the exterior man is. When one speaks of the rational or of the rational man some idea can be formed of these, but when one speaks of the rational as that which lies between the internal and the external, few if any can grasp it. Nevertheless since the subject in the internal sense of this chapter is the way in which the Lord's Rational Man was conceived and born from an influx of the Internal Man into the External Man - for this is the subject embodied within the historical descriptions involving Abram, Hagar, and Ishmael and yet to prevent the ideas presented in the explanation that follows from becoming utterly strange and unintelligible, let it be recognized that with everyone there exists an internal man, there exists a rational man which is situated in between, and there exists an external man, and that these three are quite distinct and separate from one another. For these matters see what has been stated already in 978.