Preface

THE first two volumes explained [the first] fifteen chapters of Genesis and said what is contained in their inner meaning. Attached to each chapter [in those volumes] was a record of what the Lord in his divine mercy has given me the opportunity to see and hear in the world of spirits and the heaven of angels. Now comes the third volume, which includes similar reports likewise attached to each chapter. The article appended to the present chapter, Genesis 16 [§§1966–1983], concerns visions and dreams (including prophetic dreams) in the Word.

I know few will believe that anyone can see into the other world or report from there on the state of souls after death, because few believe in the resurrection, and even fewer of the well-educated than of the naive. It is true that they say with their lips that they will rise again, because this accords with official theology, but they deny it at heart.

[2] Some even confess openly that they would believe it if someone were to rise from the dead and they were to see, hear, and touch the person. If this happened, though, it would be an isolated experience and would fail to convince those who at heart deny the resurrection. A thousand objections would occur to them and harden them in their negative frame of mind.

Some do claim to believe they will rise again, but on the day of the Last Judgment. The picture they have formed of this is that everything in the visible world will cease to exist on that day; and since they have been awaiting it in vain for so many centuries, they too are dubious. What is meant by the Last Judgment mentioned in the Word, however, will be summarized at the end of the next chapter, Genesis 17, the Lord in his divine mercy willing [§§2117–2133].

[3] These attitudes indicate what kind of people make up the Christian world today. The Sadducees told of in Matthew 22:23 and the verses that follow openly denied the resurrection, but they acted better than people today who deny it at heart but claim they do not (since it is the official teaching, as noted) Their words contradict their beliefs, and their beliefs contradict their words.

To prevent them from growing even more firmly entrenched in this misguided opinion, the Lord in his divine mercy has given me the privilege of experiencing the next world in spirit while bodily present in this world (since a human being is a spirit clothed with a body). There I have spoken with souls recently revived after death, and in fact with almost everyone I knew during physical life who had since died. Every day now for several years I have also talked with spirits and angels and seen astounding sights that it has never occurred to anyone to imagine. No illusion of any kind was involved.

[4] Many people say that if someone comes to them from the other life, they will believe, so we shall see now whether they can be persuaded despite their hard hearts.

This I can assert positively: People who come into the next life from the Christian world are the worst of all. They hate their neighbor, they hate the religion, they deny the Lord (since it is the heart rather than the mouth that does the talking in the other world), not to mention the fact that they are more adulterous than anyone else. Because heaven is starting to move away from people inside the church, then, clearly the last days are at hand, as I have learned for certain.

To learn about the identity and nature of the Word’s inner meaning, see the statements and illustrations in the first two volumes, §§1–5, 64, 65, 66, 167, 605, 920, 937, 1143, 1224, 1404, 1405, 1408, 1409, 1502 at the end, 1540, 1659, 1756, 1767–1777 and 1869–1879 (particularly), 1783, 1807; and in the present volume, §§1886–1889.

1886. Genesis 16

THIS chapter has to do with Hagar and Ishmael, but until now no one has recognized what they represent and symbolize on an inner level. No one could have recognized it, because so far the world (even the scholarly world) has supposed that the stories of the Word are mere narratives, with no deeper implications. They have said that every jot is divinely inspired, but they do not mean much by it. All they mean is that the contents have been revealed [by God] and that some amount of doctrine relevant to their theology can be drawn from it and used by teachers and students. Because the stories have been divinely inspired (the world reasons), they have divine force in people's minds and do them more good than any other history.

Taken at face value, however, the narratives do little to improve us. They have no effect at all on our eternal life, because in the other world historical detail is obliterated from memory. What good would it do us there to know about Hagar the slave, about the fact that Sarai gave her to Abram, about Ishmael, or even about Abram? In order to go to heaven and partake of its joy (that is, of eternal life), our souls need only what belongs to and comes from the Lord. This is what his Word is for, and this is what it contains in its depths.

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:

1664. The wars here symbolize nothing else on an inner level than spiritual battles or trials, as stated above in the preliminaries [§§1651, 1659]. So do other battles mentioned in the Word, especially in the prophets. Human wars have no importance on the inner planes of the Word, since they are not spiritual or heavenly and the Word contains only what is spiritual and heavenly.

The following passages (and many others as well) point to the symbolism of wars in the Word as fights with the Devil or, to put it another way, with hell. In John:

They are spirits of demons, working signs [of their intent] to go out to the monarchs of the earth and of the whole inhabited world, to gather them for the war on that great day of God Almighty. (Revelation 16:14)

Anyone can see that no other type of war on the great day of God Almighty is meant in this verse.

[2] In the same author:

The beast that comes up out of the abyss will make war. (Revelation 11:7)

The abyss here is hell. In the same author:

The dragon was enraged against the woman and went off to make war with the rest of her seed — those who were keeping God's commands and who possess Jesus Christ's testimony. (Revelation 12:17)

It was granted to [the beast] to make war with the godly. (Revelation 13:7)

All these wars are the kinds of fights we face in times of trial. The wars of the southern and northern monarchs and so on in Daniel 10 and 11 have no other meaning. Neither do the things said of Michael in Daniel 10:13, 21; 12:1; Revelation 12:7.

[3] The other prophets also provide evidence that wars symbolize nothing else. In Ezekiel, for example:

You have not gone up into the breaches or built a wall for the house of Israel, to stand fast in war on the day of Jehovah. (Ezekiel 13:5)

This is addressed to the prophets. In Isaiah:

They will beat swords into hoes and their spears into scythes; nation will not lift sword against nation, and they will not learn war any more. (Isaiah 2:4)

It is obvious here that no other kind of war is meant, and as a result that the weapons mentioned in the Word — swords, spears, shields, and so on — truly do mean the implements of such war.

[4] In the same author:

Bring water to meet the thirsty, you who live in the land of Tema; approach the wanderers with bread for them; for they will wander in the face of swords, in the face of an outstretched sword and of a strung bow and of the weight of war. (Isaiah 21:14-15)

In Jeremiah:

Shepherds and their flocks will come to the daughter of Zion. They will fix their tents near her all around. They will each graze their space. Consecrate war against her. Rise and let us go up at noon. (Jeremiah 6:3, 4, 5)

No other war is meant here, because it is a war against the daughter of Zion, that is, against the church.

[5] In the same author:

In what way have they not abandoned the city of praise, the city of my joy! Therefore its youths will fall in its streets and all the men of war will be cut off on that day. (Jeremiah 49:25-26)

The city of praise and joy stands for attributes of the church. The men of war stand for people who put up a fight.

[6] In Hosea:

I will strike a pact with them on that day — with the wild animal of the field, and with the bird in the heavens and the creeping animal of the ground. And bow and sword and war I will break off from the earth, and I will make them lie down securely. (Hosea 2:18)

Again, just as war stands for personal struggles, the different weapons here stand for the implements of that spiritual struggle, which are broken when our obsessions and distorted thinking die down and we come into a time of peace and quiet.

[7] In David:

Observe the works of Jehovah, who makes wastelands on the earth, stopping wars all the way to the end of the earth. The bow he breaks, and he lops off the spear; chariots he burns with fire. (Psalms 46:8-9)

Likewise. In the same author:

In Salem is God's dwelling place, and his abode is in Zion. There he broke the bow's flaming arrows, the shield, and the sword — and war. (Psalms 76:2-3)

Because priests represented the Lord, who does all the fighting for us, their function is described as military service ¹ in Numbers 4:23, 35, 39, 43, 47.

[8] We do not see that Jehovah alone — the Lord — fights and overcomes the Devil in us during our spiritual struggles, and yet it is the unchanging truth. Evil spirits cannot lift a finger against us without permission, and angels cannot ward off the least threat except by the Lord's power. So the Lord alone is the one who carries the weight of every battle and wins. This was represented in various places by the wars the children of Israel waged against the surrounding nations. ² The statement that the Lord is the only one to do this also appears in Moses:

Jehovah your God, walking in front of you, he will fight for you. (Deuteronomy 1:30)

In the same author:

Jehovah your God is walking with you, to fight for you with your enemies to save you. (Deuteronomy 20:4)

Joshua contains such statements as well, as in 23:3, 5.

[9] All the wars there against the idolatrous residents of the land of Canaan represented battles carried on with hell by the Lord and therefore by his church and people in his church. This idea accords with the following words in Isaiah, too:

As the lion roars — and the young lion — over its prey, when an abundance of shepherds race up against it, ³ by whose voice [the lion] is not dismayed and by whose commotion it is not distressed; so Jehovah Sabaoth will come down to do battle on Zion's mountain and on its hill. (Isaiah 31:4)

[10] So Jehovah (the Lord) is also called a man of war, as in Moses:

Jehovah is a man of war; Jehovah is his name. (Exodus 15:3)

In Isaiah:

Jehovah will go forth as a hero; as a man of wars he will rouse his zeal. He will shout, even bellow; over his enemies he will prevail. (Isaiah 42:13)

That is why many activities of war are also attributed to the Lord, like the shouting and bellowing here.

[11] Spirits and angels appear as men of war too, when they are representing [the Lord]. In Joshua, for instance:

Joshua raised his eyes and looked, and here, now, a man standing opposite him, and his sword was unsheathed in his hand. He said to Joshua, "I am the leader of Jehovah's army." And Joshua fell on his face to the earth. (Joshua 5:13-14)

The scene appeared this way because it was representative. So Jacob's descendants called their wars Jehovah's wars. ⁴

[12] The ancient churches did the same, since they had books likewise named Jehovah's Wars, as is evident in Moses:

It is said in the book Jehovah's Wars ... (Numbers 21:14-15)

These wars were written about in the same way as the wars mentioned in the current chapter, but they were purely symbolic of the church's battles. This method of writing was well known in ancient times because the people of that day were deeper and their thinking loftier. ⁵

Footnotes: