1073. The symbolism of he was uncovered in the middle of his tent as the resulting perversions can be seen from the symbolism of being uncovered, or naked. The person who is portrayed as uncovered and denuded by drunkenness on wine is one who has no religious truth, and even more so one in whom that truth is perverted.

The actual truth that composes faith is compared to clothes, in that it provides a covering for the good that comes of charity, or for charity itself. Charity is the body itself, and truth, as a result, is the clothing. Or, to say exactly the same thing, charity is the soul itself, while religious truth is like the body that clothes the soul. The Word calls religious truths clothes or a covering, which is why verse 23 below says that Shem and Japheth took a garment and covered their father's nakedness.

The relationship of spiritual entities to heavenly ones is like that of the body to the soul it clothes, or like that of garments to the body they clothe. In heaven, spiritual things are also represented by clothes. Since the present verse says that [Noah] lay uncovered, the meaning is that people deprived themselves of the truth that faith espouses through their desire to explore this truth through empirical data and therefore shallow logic.

Lying naked from being drunk on wine symbolizes the same things [elsewhere] in the Word, as in Jeremiah:

Rejoice and be glad, daughter of Edom, living in the land of Uz. The goblet will also pass over you. You will become drunk and go naked. (Lamentations 4:21)

And in Habakkuk:

Doom to those who cause their companion to drink, ... and also intoxicating them in order to look on their naked parts. (Habakkuk 2:15)