1608. The symbolism of and to your seed forever as the people who would believe in him can be seen from the symbolism of seed as faith, specifically the faith that comes of charity, as discussed earlier, in §§255, 256, 1025.

The Lord's own words in John make it plain that it was his seed — people believing in him — who would be given the kingdom of heaven:

The Father loves the Son and has given everything into his hand. Those who believe in the Son have eternal life; but those who do not believe in the Son will not see life. (John 3:35-36)

[2] And in the same author:

As many as did accept him, to them he gave the power to be God's children, to those believing in his name, not from blood or from the flesh's will or from a man's will. (John 1:12-13)

These words show what faith is, or belief in the Lord: it exists in people who accept and believe in him not because of the flesh's will or because of a man's will. The will of the flesh means something opposite to love and charity, since flesh symbolizes such an opposite (§999); and a man's will means something opposite to the faith that comes of love or charity, which is what a man symbolizes. The flesh's will and a man's will are what divide, but love and the faith that comes of love are what unite. So people who have love and the faith that comes of love are the ones born of God, ¹ and because they are born of God, they are called God's children. They are also his seed who will inherit the kingdom of heaven, as symbolized by the words of the present verse: "All the land that you see I will give to you and to your seed forever."

[3] Anyone willing simply to think about it is capable of seeing that the kingdom of heaven cannot be given to people whose faith is devoid of charity, that is, people who say they have faith and yet hate their neighbor. This kind of faith cannot have any life in it, since hatred — hell, in other words — constitutes its life. Hell consists of pure hatred — not the kinds of hatred that we inherit, but the kinds that we secure for ourselves by the way we actually live.

Footnotes:

620. The symbolism of the land as the tribe of people mentioned earlier is established by places above that show the symbolism of the land (or earth) and the ground [§§268, 566].

Land is a term that surfaces repeatedly in the Word, where it means an area — such as the land of Canaan — in which the Lord's true church exists. It also means an area — such as the land of Egypt or another non-Jewish nation — in which the church does not exist. Accordingly it stands for the race of people living there; and since it stands for the race, it also stands for every member of the race there.

An expression such as the land of Canaan uses the term land for a heavenly love. The lands of non-Jewish nations are so called on account of foul loves. But ground is used in reference to faith, which is planted as a seed. As I showed [§566:2], the land means the area surrounding the ground and the ground means the area surrounding a field, just as love is what contains faith and faith is what contains the religious knowledge that is planted.

The use of land in the current verse implies a race or tribe in which every element of heavenly love and of the church died away. (How a term applies [in a given context] can be determined from the subject under discussion.)