1463. The fact that residing as an immigrant means being taught can be seen from the symbolism of immigrating in the Word as being taught. This symbolism comes about because in heaven, residing in a foreign land and immigrating — in other words, moving from one place to another — is simply a change in condition, as shown earlier (§§1376, 1379). So every time the Word speaks of traveling, immigrating, or moving from place to place, the one thing that comes to an angel's mind is the kind of change in condition that angels experience. Changes of state can be either changes in one's way of thinking or changes in one's feelings. Changes in the state of one's thinking are new concepts. In the world of spirits, these changes result from instruction, 1 and since the people of the earliest church were in contact with heaven and its angels, a consequence was that traveling meant exactly that to them. So here the fact that Abram went down into Egypt to reside as an immigrant does indeed symbolize instruction of the Lord.
[2] The journey of Jacob and his offspring into Egypt means much the same. In Isaiah, for instance:
This is what the Lord Jehovih has said: "My people went down to Egypt in the beginning to stay as immigrants, and Assyria for no reason oppressed them." (Isaiah 52:4)
Assyria here stands for specious logic.
In the Jewish church, for the same reason, people who were being taught were called immigrants residing in their midst, and by command they were to be treated the same as the native-born (Exodus 12:48-49; Leviticus 24:22; Numbers 15:13, 14, 15, 16, 26, 29; 19:10). Ezekiel speaks of them this way:
You shall divide this land for yourselves according to the tribes of Israel. And it will happen that you shall divide it by lot as an inheritance for yourselves and for the immigrants residing in your midst, and they shall be to you as the native-born among the children of Israel. Along with you they shall cast a lot for an inheritance in the middle of the tribes of Israel. And it will happen that, in the tribe that an immigrant is residing with, there you shall give [the immigrant] an inheritance. (Ezekiel 47:21, 22, 23)
This is about a new Jerusalem, or the Lord's kingdom. The immigrants residing in the land mean people who allow themselves to be instructed, and consequently they mean religious outsiders. 2 Evidence that immigrants stand for people who are being taught may be seen in the statement that whatever tribe an immigrant was living with, that was where the immigrant was to receive an inheritance; tribes stand for tenets of the true faith.
[3] Immigrating also has the same symbolism as traveling and settling. Traveling symbolizes the customs and pattern of a life, while settling somewhere symbolizes living one's life, as mentioned earlier, in §1293. So the land of Canaan is also referred to as the land of Abraham's, Isaac's, and Jacob's travels (in Genesis 28:4; 36:7; 37:1; Exodus 6:4). And Jacob said to Pharaoh:
The days of the years of my travels: Few and evil have been the days of the years of my life, and they have not overtaken the days of the years of the life of my forebears, in the days of their travels. (Genesis 47:9)
Travels here stand for the way we live and what we are taught.
Footnotes:
1. For more on the moral and spiritual instruction that produces these "changes in the state of one's thinking," see Heaven and Hell 512-520. For extensive cross-references from Heaven and Hell to this topic as it appears in Secrets of Heaven, see Swedenborg's footnote at the end of Heaven and Hell 513. [RS]
2. "Religious outsiders" represents the Latin word gentes here. Elsewhere in this translation and this edition the word is often rendered "nations," by which Swedenborg generally means anyone who is outside a given "church." In the present context, he may be referring to non-Christians. [LHC]
