1607. Because all the land that you see — to you I will give it symbolizes the kingdom of heaven and the fact that it would be the Lord's. This can be seen from the symbolism of the land — here the land of Canaan, since it says the land that you see — as the kingdom of heaven. The land of Canaan represented the Lord's kingdom in the heavens (heaven) and his kingdom on earth (the church), a symbolism that has been discussed several times earlier [§§1, 115, 620, 1025:4, 1066, 1413, 1437, 1585].

Many places in the Word indicate that the Lord was given a kingdom in heaven and on earth. In Isaiah, for example:

A child has been born, a son has been given to us, and sovereignty will be on his shoulder; and his name will be called Miraculous, Counselor, God, Hero, Eternal Father, Prince of Peace. (Isaiah 9:6)

In Daniel:

I was seeing in visions at night, and there! In the clouds of the heavens, it was as if the Son of Humankind was coming. And he came to the Ancient One, ¹ and they brought him before the [Ancient One]. And he was given power to rule, and glory, and kingship; and all peoples, nations, and tongues will serve him. His ruling power is eternal power that will not pass away, and his kingship one that will not perish. (Daniel 7:13-14)

The Lord himself also says this; in Matthew:

Everything has been turned over to me by my Father. (Matthew 11:27; and Luke 10:22)

In another place in Matthew:

Authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. (Matthew 28:18)

In John:

You have given your Son authority over all flesh, so that to all that you have given him he may give eternal life. (John 17:2-3)

The same thing is meant by sitting on his right side, as in Luke:

From this time now, the Son of Humankind will be sitting on the right side of God's strength. (Luke 22:69)

[2] All authority in the heavens and on earth was given to the Son of Humankind, but it is important to realize that the Lord had authority over everything in the heavens and on earth before he came into the world. He was God from eternity, and Jehovah, as he himself clearly says in John:

Now make me glorious — you, Father, in your own self — with the glory that I had in you before the world existed. (John 17:5)

And in the same author:

Truly, truly, I say to you: before Abraham existed, I existed. ² (John 8:58)

After all, he was Jehovah and God to the people of the earliest church (the church before the Flood) and was visible to them. He was also Jehovah and God to the ancient church (the church after the Flood). And he was the one whom all the rituals of the Jewish religion represented and whom the Jews would worship. The reason he says that all authority in heaven and on earth was given to him, as if it was then happening for the first time, is that "Son of Humankind" means his human quality. Once this quality had become one with his divine quality, it too was Jehovah and at that same time possessed authority. This could never have happened before he had acquired his glory — that is, before his human nature had also come to have life in itself, through union with his divine nature, and so had likewise become divine, had become Jehovah. He says so in John:

Just as the Father has life in himself, he has also granted the Son to have life in himself. (John 5:26)

[3] His human nature, or outer self, is also what Daniel calls Son of Humankind in the passage quoted above; and Isaiah in the passage quoted refers to it with the words "A child has been born and a son has been given to us."

He now saw and was promised that he would be given the kingdom of heaven and all power in the heavens and on earth, which is symbolized by the words "All the land that you see — to you I will give it, and to your seed after you forever." This was before his human quality had become one with his divine quality, which happened when he completely overcame the Devil and hell. That is to say, it happened when he rid himself of all evil — the only incompatible element — by his own power and his own strength.

Footnotes:

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.

Footnotes: