1066. From them the whole earth scattered out means that these gave rise to all subsequent doctrinal systems, both those based on truth and those based on falsity, as the symbolism of the earth shows.
The earth, or land, is understood in various ways in the Word. In the most general sense it is taken to refer to the place — the territory — where the church is or was. Examples are the land of Canaan, the land of Judah, the land of Israel. So it is used generally for everyone in the church, since the land is named after the people living there, as is also common in everyday speech. Long ago, then, whenever people spoke of the whole earth, they had in mind not the whole globe but only the land where the church existed and consequently the church itself. The following passages from the Word will illustrate this. In Isaiah:
Jehovah is emptying the earth. The earth will be emptied bare. The earth will mourn, will be confused. And the land will be defiled beneath its inhabitants; on this account a curse will devour the land. Therefore the inhabitants of the land will be destroyed by fire, and the humanity left behind will be a pittance. The floodgates in the heights opened and the earth's foundations shook. The earth was shattered utterly. The earth split wide open. The earth quaked, tottering. The earth staggers helplessly like a drunkard and sways back and forth like a shack; and its transgression will weigh on it, and it will fall and not rise again. (Isaiah 24:1, 3-4, 5, 6, 18, 19, 20-21)
The earth, or land, stands for the people in it, specifically the people of the church — and so the church itself — and for those aspects of the church that have been purged. While being purged they are said to be emptied, to shake, stagger like a drunkard, sway, fall, and not rise.
[2] In the following verse from Malachi, the land symbolizes humankind and consequently the church, which is composed of humankind:
All nations will proclaim you fortunate, because you will be a land of pleasure. (Malachi 3:12)
The earth stands for the church in Isaiah:
Do you not understand the foundations of the earth? (Isaiah 40:21)
The earth's foundations stand for the church's foundations. In the same author:
Look — I am creating new heavens and a new earth! (Isaiah 65:17; 66:22; Revelation 21:1)
New heavens and a new earth stand for the Lord's kingdom and the church. In Zechariah:
Jehovah is stretching out the heavens and founding the earth and forming the human spirit in the middle of it. (Zechariah 12:1)
The earth stands for the church here, as it also does above:
In the beginning, God created heaven and earth. (Genesis 1:1)
The heavens and the earth were completed. (Genesis 2:1)
These are the births of heaven and earth. (Genesis 2:4)
In each of these instances, the earth stands for the church, which was created, formed, and made. In Joel:
Before him the earth shook, the heavens trembled; the sun and moon turned black. (Joel 2:10)
The earth stands for the church and for everyone in the church. When the church is being purged, heaven and earth are said to shake, while the sun and moon — love and faith — are said to grow black.
[3] In Jeremiah:
I looked at the earth when, indeed, there was void and emptiness; and to the heavens, and these had no light. (Jeremiah 4:23)
The earth clearly stands for a person who has not a bit of religion inside. In the same author:
The whole earth will be stripped bare, yet I will not make a full end. Because of this the earth will mourn and the heavens will be draped in black. (Jeremiah 4:27-28)
Again it stands for the church, whose external aspects are the earth and whose internal aspects are the heavens, which are described as draped in black and as having no light when there is no longer a wise appreciation of goodness or an intelligent understanding of truth. Under those circumstances, the earth is also void and empty, and the same is true of any person in the church who would otherwise be a church. 1
There are other places as well in which the whole earth means the church and only the church. In Daniel:
The fourth creature will be a fourth kingdom on the earth, which will differ from all the kingdoms and consume the whole earth and trample it and crush it. (Daniel 7:23)
The whole earth stands for the church and the people in it. The Word, after all, does not talk about the power exercised by sovereigns, as secular literature does, but about sacred topics and about the conditions in the church symbolized by the earth's monarchies.
[4] In Jeremiah:
A huge storm will be stirred up from the edges of the earth, and the people stabbed by Jehovah will on that day reach from the ends of the earth to the ends of the earth. (Jeremiah 25:32-33)
"From the ends of the earth to the ends of the earth" stands for the church and for everyone in the church. In Isaiah:
The whole earth is at rest and quiet; they raised a glad shout. (Isaiah 14:7)
The whole earth stands for the church. In Ezekiel:
As the whole earth rejoices, ... (Ezekiel 35:14)
Here too the whole earth stands for the church. In Isaiah:
I swore that the waters of Noah would no longer pass over the earth. (Isaiah 54:9)
The earth stands for the church, since the church is the subject in this passage.
[5] Because the earth or land in the Word symbolizes the church, it also symbolizes what is not the church. (Every word like this has contrary or opposite meanings.) This is true of the different lands the surrounding nations lived in, or to put it generally, all lands outside that of Canaan.
For this reason, the earth is also taken as standing for the people, and for a person outside the church, and so for the outer self, with its will, its desire for autonomy, and so on. Rarely does the Word use it to mean the entire globe, unless it is symbolizing the situation of the whole human race in regard to religion or nonreligion.
Moreover, since the earth is what contains the ground (which is also the church) and the ground is what contains a field, the term holds many different nuances and accordingly symbolizes many different things. Just what the term symbolizes is to be gleaned from the subject under discussion, the subject to which the term applies, because this is the reality that underlies the term.
From all this it can now be seen that in this verse the whole earth, which scattered out from Noah's sons, symbolizes not the whole inhabited world, or the whole human race, but all the doctrinal systems of the various religions — both the systems based on truth and the ones based on falsity.
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