276. The symbolism of eating bread in the sweat of his face as rejecting what is heavenly can be established by the symbolism of bread. Bread means everything of a spiritual or heavenly character, which is food for the angels. If they were deprived of it, they could not live, any more than a person deprived of bread or food can. The heavenly and spiritual things existing in heaven also correspond to the bread on earth. 1 Moreover they are represented by bread, as can be seen in many passages.
The Lord is bread because everything heavenly or spiritual comes from him, as he teaches in John:
This is the bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats this bread will live forever. (John 6:58)
In consequence, bread and wine are symbols in the Holy Supper. 2 This heavenly aspect was represented by the manna as well [Exodus 16:4-31]. The fact that heavenly and spiritual things are angels' food is also clear from the Lord's words:
Humankind shall not live on bread alone but on every word coming out of God's mouth. (Matthew 4:4)
That is, humankind is to live on the Lord's life, the source of every heavenly and spiritual quality.
[2] The final generation of the earliest church — which directly preceded the Flood and is the subject of these verses — was so degenerate and so immersed in what belonged to their senses and their body that they refused to hear about religious truth or about the Lord's nature. Nor did they want to know that he was going to come and save them. At the simple mention of those things they turned their backs. Such rejection is depicted by the eating of bread in the sweat of one's face.
It was similar with the Jews, whose nature was such that they would not acknowledge heavenly things and did not want any other Messiah than a worldly one. 3 For that reason, they could not help rejecting the manna (which represented the Lord) and calling it worthless bread. This is why snakes were sent among them (Numbers 21:5-6).
What is more, the heavenly things that they benefited from in their distress, in their misery, and in their tears they called the bread of distress, the bread of misery, and the bread of tears [Isaiah 30:20; Deuteronomy 16:3; 1 Kings 22:27; Psalms 80:5]. The things they benefited from even while rejecting them are here called the bread of their face's sweat.
Footnotes:
1. Swedenborg saw the material world as caused by the spiritual world and as therefore reflecting it; that is, physical phenomena and events offer images of — are "responsive to" or "correspond to" — spiritual phenomena and events. As noted by Swedenborg in §4, the primary purpose of this work is to demonstrate that the Bible contains levels of spiritual meaning that can at least in part be discovered by a knowledge of specific correspondential relationships. [GFD, RHK]
2. The Holy Supper is the term Swedenborg generally uses for the Christian rite of Communion, or the Eucharist, a sacramental consumption of bread and wine initiated by Jesus Christ on the eve of his Crucifixion (see Matthew 26:26-29; Mark 14:22-25; Luke 22:14-20). [LHC]
3. This last phrase echoes John 18:36: "Jesus answered, ‘My kingdom is not of this world.'" [LHC] Swedenborg here reflects a common Christian polemic against Judaism: that it sought political liberation for the Jewish nation rather than collective salvation for humanity. See also the reader's guide, pages 51-55. [RS]
