999. The symbolism of flesh as human volition is established by the symbolism of flesh in its proper sense, having to do with our depraved self. [In the Word,] flesh symbolizes all people in general and those in particular who are oriented toward their bodies. (See the earlier demonstration of this in §574.) Since flesh symbolizes all people and particularly body-oriented ones, it also symbolizes selfhood and consequently volition.
Our volition or will is nothing but evil. This being so, when the term flesh refers to people, it symbolizes every craving or all greed. Our will consists wholly of cravings, as shown several times already [§§105, 568, 594, 634, 801:1, 977:2]. Since this is what flesh symbolizes, the same thing was represented by the flesh that the people craved in the wilderness, described by Moses in these words:
The rabble that was in their midst had a strong craving. So they wept again and said, "Who will feed us flesh?" (Numbers 11:4)
Clearly flesh is being called a craving, since it says, "They had a strong craving. Who will feed us flesh?" The words that follow these also illustrate the meaning:
The flesh was still between their teeth, before it was shredded, and Jehovah's anger blazed out against the people, and Jehovah struck a very strong blow among the people. And he called the name of that place the Graves of Greed, because there they buried the people who had had a greedy craving. (Numbers 11:33-34)
[2] Anyone can see that such a blow [or plague] would never have been brought on the people just because they craved flesh; it was not their longing for meat that was to blame. Such a longing is only natural, when people used to eating meat are deprived of it for a long time, as was then true for the people in the wilderness. The real reason — a spiritual one — ran deeper: the people were such that they felt utter disgust for what the manna symbolized and represented (as verse 6 of that chapter [Numbers 11] also shows), and they longed only for the kind of things that flesh symbolized and represented. 1 Those things are the self-centered impulses of the will, the stirrings of greed, which in themselves resemble dung and are inherently profane. It was because that church was a representative one (as a consequence of such representations) that a plague of these proportions was inflicted on the people. The events that took place among them, you see, were represented in a spiritual way in heaven, where manna represented what is heavenly and the flesh the people craved represented a sordid urge of the will. The result, because they were the kind of people described, was punishment.
These and other places in the Word demonstrate that flesh symbolizes the will — in this case, human will. 2 Review the discussion concerning the beast of the earth at verse 2 of this chapter [§987] to see how unclean that will is.
Footnotes:
1. On the idea that Scripture possesses an inner meaning, see note 3 in §1 and note 1 in §606. On the difference between symbolism and representation in Swedenborg's theology, see note 3 in §4. [Editors]
2. For other passages in which Swedenborg discusses the meaning of "flesh" in Scripture, see §§3813:4-7, 10283. Section 8409:3 has related discussion. [SS]