1443. In regard to the fact that the oak grove of Moreh is the dawn of perception, this is the situation: In us we have capacities for true understanding, for rationality, and for knowing facts. Capacities for true understanding are at the center, rational abilities are less central, and factual knowledge is on the outside. These abilities, in this arrangement, are called our spiritual assets.

In heavenly people, the ability to understand is compared to a garden filled with all kinds of trees. Rational capacities are compared to a forest of cedar and so on — the kind of trees in Lebanon. ¹ But facts are like oak groves, since they resemble the tangled branches that oaks have. The trees themselves symbolize perceptions. The trees on the east in the Garden of Eden, for instance [Genesis 2:8-9], symbolize the deepest perceptions, or those that comprise true understanding, as already shown (§§99, 100, 103). The trees in Lebanon's forest symbolize perceptions that are less deep, or the perception of rational concepts. The trees found in an oak grove, though, symbolize more superficial perceptions, or the perception of facts, which belong to the outer self. That is why the oak grove of Moreh symbolizes the dawn of perception in the Lord, since he was still young and did not yet have spiritual assets inside him.

In addition, the oak grove of Moreh was where the children of Israel first arrived after crossing the Jordan and saw the land of Canaan. Moses speaks of it this way:

You shall give the blessing on Mount Gerizim and the curse on Mount Ebal. Are they not across the Jordan, beyond the path of the sunset, in the land where the Canaanite lives in the plain opposite Gilgal, beside the oak groves of Moreh? (Deuteronomy 11:29-30)

This too symbolizes the beginning of perception, since the entry of the children of Israel represents the entry of the faithful into the Lord's kingdom.

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