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.

3128. And told her mother’s house according to these words. That this signifies toward natural good of every kind whithersoever enlightenment could reach, is evident from the signification of the “mother’s house,” as being the good of the external man, that is, natural good. (That a “house” denotes good may be seen above, n. 2233, 2234, 2559; also that man’s external or natural is from the mother, but the internal from the father, n. 1815.) The good with man is compared in the Word to a “house,” and on this account a man who is in good is called a “house of God;” but internal good is called the “father’s house,” and the good that is in the same degree is called the “house of the brethren;” but external good, which is the same as natural good, is called the “mother’s house.” Moreover all good and truth are born in this manner, namely, by the influx of internal good as of a father into external good as of a mother.

[2] As this verse treats of the origin of the truth which is to be conjoined with good in the rational, it is therefore said that Rebekah (by whom this truth is represented) ran to the house of her mother, for that was the origin of this truth. For as before said and shown, all good flows in by an internal way (that is, by the way of the soul) into man’s rational, and through this into his faculty of knowing, even into that which is of the senses; and by enlightenment there it causes truths to be seen. Truths are called forth thence, and are divested of their natural form, and are conjoined with good in the midway, that is, in the rational, and at the same time they make the man rational, and at last spiritual. But how these things are accomplished is utterly unknown to man; because at this day it is scarcely known what good is, and that it is distinct from truth; still less that man is reformed by means of the influx of good into truth, and by the conjunction of the two; neither is it known that the rational is distinct from the natural. And when these things, which are most general, are not known, it cannot possibly be known how the initiation of truth into good, and the conjunction of the two, is effected-which are the subjects treated of in this chapter in its internal sense. But whereas these arcana have been revealed, and are manifest to those who are in good, that is, who are angelic minds, therefore however obscure they may appear to others, they nevertheless are to be set forth, because they are in the internal sense.

[3] Concerning the enlightenment from good through truth in the natural man, which is here called the “mother’s house,” the case is this: Divine good with man inflows into his rational, and through the rational into his natural, and indeed into its memory-knowledges, that is, into the knowledges and doctrinal things therein, as before said; and there by a fitting of itself in, it forms truths for itself, through which it then enlightens all things that are in the natural man. But if the life of the natural man is such that it does not receive the Divine good, but either repels it, or perverts it, or suffocates it, then the Divine good cannot be fitted in, thus it cannot form for itself truths; and consequently the natural can no longer be enlightened; for enlightenment in the natural man is effected from good through truths; and when there is no longer enlightenment, there can be no reformation. This is the reason why in the internal sense the natural man also is much treated of in regard to its quality; thus whence truth is, namely, that it is from good there.

6221. 'Behold, your father is sick' means the next stage towards regeneration. This is clear from the meaning of 'dying' as resurrection to life, and regeneration, dealt with in 3326, 3498, 3505, 4618, 4621, 6036; consequently 'being sick' prior to death means a movement towards regeneration, thus the next stage towards it. The meaning of 'dying' as regeneration and of 'being sick' as the next stage towards it is bound to seem too far-fetched to be believed; but the person who knows anything about the way angels think and speak will acknowledge the truth of it. Angels have no knowledge at all of death or of sickness and consequently form no mental image of them. Instead they form, when a person reads about sickness and death, an idea of the continuation of life, and an idea of resurrection. The reason they do this is that when a person dies he casts off solely what has served him for use in the world and enters into the life his spirit has led. This is the idea that comes to angels' minds when a person reads about 'dying' and 'being sick'. An idea of regeneration likewise comes to mind, since regeneration is resurrection to life. For at first the person was spiritually dead; but once he has been regenerated he is made alive and 'a son of the resurrection. ¹

[2] The person who, while living in the body, is desirous of heaven thinks of death and of sickness previous to it as nothing else than resurrection to life. For when he thinks about heaven he detaches himself from thought of the body, especially when he is sick and approaching death. From this it is evident that a spiritual idea of death of the body is an idea of newness of life. When therefore those in heaven refer to resurrection or regeneration, and this comes down and is channelled into the kinds of things that belong to the world, it cannot fall into any other kinds of images than these. This is how it is with the Word. Every single detail has come down from the Lord, passing through heaven and into the world. On the way down it assumes forms suited to the understanding of those in the three heavens, and at length assumes a form suited to man's understanding, which form is the literal sense.

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