1444. The symbolism of and the Canaanite was then in the land as the evil in his outer self that he inherited from his mother can be seen from statements already made about the Lord's heredity [§1414]. He was born like the rest of us and carried with him different kinds of evil that he had received from his mother, which he fought against and completely overcame. As people generally realize, the Lord underwent and endured heavy spiritual trials. (With the Lord's divine mercy, these will be discussed later [§§1573:4, 1659:2, 1661, 1663, 1668, 1690, 1692, 1787, 1812-1813, 1820:5].) In fact he fought alone, with his own might, against all of hell; that is how severe his trials were.

No one can undergo spiritual crisis unless something bad clings to the person. No one devoid of evil can suffer the least tribulation. Evil is what hellish spirits stir up.

[2] The Lord had no actual evil, no evil of his own, as all the rest of us do. What he had was evil inherited from his mother, which in the present verse is called the Canaanite then in the land. For more on this, see the remarks above at verse 1, §1414. To review, we are born with two heredities, one from our father and the other from our mother. Our heredity from our father lasts forever; that from our mother is dissolved by the Lord when we are being reborn. The Lord's heredity from his father, though, was divine, while his heredity from his mother was evil. The latter is the subject of the current verse and is what enabled him to be put to the test. (For mention of his trials, see Mark 1:12-13; Matthew 4:1; Luke 4:1-2.) But again, he had no actual evil, no evil of his own. Nor did any of his mother's evil heredity remain after he had overthrown hell through his trials, which is why it says here that it was then, that is, that the Canaanite was then in the land.

[3] The Canaanites were people who lived along the sea ¹ and the shores of the Jordan, as is evident in Moses:

When the scouts returned, they said, "We came into the land to which you sent us, and in fact it was flowing with milk and honey, and this is its fruit. But a strong people is living in the land, and the cities are fortified and very big, and we saw the offspring of Anak there. Amalek lives in the south; and the Hittite and the Jebusite and the Amorite live on the mountain, and the Canaanite lives along the sea and along the shores of the Jordan." (Numbers 13:27, 28, 29)

The fact that the Canaanites lived along the sea and the shores of the Jordan consequently symbolized evil in a person's outer self — the kind of evil we inherit from our mother — since the sea and the Jordan were outer borders.

[4] Zechariah also yields evidence that a Canaanite symbolizes this kind of evil:

No longer will there be a Canaanite in the house of Jehovah Sabaoth on that day. (Zechariah 14:21)

This refers to the Lord's kingdom and symbolizes the fact that the Lord has completely conquered the evil meant by a Canaanite and banished it from his kingdom.

All types of evil are symbolized by the idolatrous nations in the land of Canaan, including the Canaanites proper, in such places as Genesis 15:19-20, 21; Exodus 3:8, 17; 23:23, 28; 33:2; 34:11; Deuteronomy 7:1; 20:17; Joshua 3:10; 24:11; Judges 3:5. What particular evil each nation symbolizes will be told elsewhere, by the Lord's divine mercy. ²

Footnotes:

1659. Inner Meaning

THE contents of this chapter do not look as though they could represent anything. All the chapter talks about is the wars among a number of kings, Abram's rescue of Lot, and finally Melchizedek, so it reads as if it did not have a single heavenly secret buried inside. Still, in the inner meaning, these elements of the story (like all the others) conceal the deepest secrets possible, which follow on in an unbroken chain from those above and lead in an unbroken chain to those below.

[2] The earlier parts spoke of the Lord and his education, and of his outer self, which needed to unite with his inner self by means of knowledge both secular and religious. As noted, though, his outer self harbored obstacles to the union, as a result of his maternal heredity [§§1414, 1444, 1573, 1601-1603]. What interfered had to be thrust out through combat and times of trial before his outer self could become one with his inner, or in other words, before his human quality could become one with his divine. The present chapter therefore discusses those struggles, which the inner sense represents and symbolizes through the wars here described.

Within the church it is known that Melchizedek represented the Lord and as a result that when the subject is Melchizedek the inner sense speaks of the Lord. ¹ A further conclusion, logically, is that not only what is said of Melchizedek but everything else too has a representative meaning. After all, not a syllable could have been written in the Word which did not come down from heaven and in which angels consequently do not see heavenly dimensions.

[3] In the earliest times, too, wars represented many things. The people of those times called them Jehovah's Wars, and the sole purpose of the term was to symbolize the struggles of the church and of the people in the church, ² or in other words, to symbolize the spiritual trials of those people. Spiritual trials are nothing but our battles and wars against the evil in us, so they are fights against the Devil's crew, which stirs up the evil and tries to destroy religion and religious people.

The wars mentioned in the Word have no other meaning, as is obvious from the consideration that the Word cannot treat of anything but the Lord, his kingdom, and the church. This is because it is divine rather than human and accordingly has to do with heaven rather than the world. So the wars of the literal story can mean nothing else in an inner sense. You will be able to see this better below.

Footnotes: