Wine played a key role in the ancient world, where safe, reliable water sources were scarce. It could be stored for long periods of time; if lightly fermented it was rich in sugar content; it was high in mineral content; it tasted good and generally had intoxicating qualities. Thus it was a valuable commodity and treated with reverence.

Wine is, of course, made from grapes. Grapes – sweet, juicy, nutritious and full of energy-rich fructose – represent the Lord's own exquisite desire to be good to us. That's powerful stuff! But grapes have a short shelf life; you might eat a bunch for a burst of energy, but you can't exactly carry them around with you for long-term sustenance. And so it is with desires for good: They tend to come to us in energizing bursts, but fade away fairly quickly. We need something more stable and lasting.

At some point in the distant past people figured out that if you squeeze the juice from the grapes and let it ferment, the result is a liquid that offers that stability: wine. The spiritual meaning works the same way; if we examine our desires for good, try to understand and think about how to apply them, what we will get are concepts about what good really is, how to recognize it and how to make it happen. And just like the wine, these ideas offer stability and portability. For instance, finding a wallet full of cash on the sidewalk might severely test our desire to be honest, but the idea that "you shall not steal" is pretty hard to shake.

Wine, then, on the deepest level represents divine truth flowing from divine goodness – the true principles that arise from the fact that the Lord loves us and desires everything good for us.

Wine comes in many varieties, though, and is used in many ways. Depending on context it can represent truth that arises from a desire for good on much more mundane levels. You want your children to be healthy so you make them brush their teeth even though they complain and it's a pain in the neck; the truth that brushing their teeth is good for them is wine on a very day-to-day level.

In some cases wine can also actually represent good things that arise from true ideas, something of a reverse from its inmost meaning. This happens when we are in transitional stages, setting higher ideas and principles above our less-worthy desires in an effort to reshape our actions. In that case our principles are the things being squeezed, with good habits the result.

There is also, of course, a darker side to wine. There is a good deal of debate about just how much alcohol wine had in Biblical times, and some of it may indeed have been more like concentrated grape juice. But there are also many references to wine and drunkeness, so some of it, at least, was fairly potent.

On a spiritual level, getting drunk on wine represents relying too much on our ideas, taking logic to such an extreme that we forget the good things we were trying to achieve in the first place.

(Referenties: Apocalypse Explained 376 [1-40], 1152; Apocalypse Revealed 316, 635; Arcana Coelestia 1071 [1-5], 1727, 3580 [1-4], 5117 [7], 6377, 10137 [1-10]; The Apocalypse Explained 329 [2-4]; The New Jerusalem and its Heavenly Doctrine 219)

258. There is a spiritual meaning in the Word that is known as "the inner meaning. " No one who does not know what correspondence is can know what the inner meaning of the Word is: 2895, 4322. Absolutely everything in the earthly world, right down to the smallest details, corresponds to and therefore means something spiritual: 2987-3003, 3213-3227. The spiritual realities to which earthly things correspond take on different guises on the earthly level and therefore are not recognized: 1887, 3632, 8920. Hardly anyone nowadays knows where in the Word its divine quality resides, when in fact it is in its inner or spiritual meaning-and people nowadays do not even know that this meaning exists: 4989, 9280. The mystical dimension of the Word is precisely that the contents of its inner or spiritual meaning deal with the Lord, his kingdom, and the church, and not with earthly things that take place in this world: 4923. In many passages the statements of the prophets are unintelligible and therefore of no use apart from their inner meaning: 2608, 8020, 8398 (which provide some examples). For example, the meaning of the white horse in the Book of Revelation (2760 following); the meaning of the keys of the kingdom of the heavens that were given Peter (preface Genesis 22, §9410); the meaning of flesh, blood, bread, and wine in the Holy Supper, and therefore why it was instituted by the Lord (8682); the meaning of Jacob's prophecies about his sons in Genesis 49 (6306, 6333-6465); the meanings of many of the prophecies about Judah and Israel, prophecies that in their literal meaning contradict each other and do not square with [the actual history of] that people (6333, 6361, 6415, 6438, 6444); and countless other passages (2608).

An overview of the inner or spiritual meaning of the Word: 1767-1777, 1869-1879. There is deeper meaning throughout the Word and in every detail of it: 1143, 1984, 2135, 2333, 2395, 2495, 2619. These meanings are not visible in the literal meaning, but they are there within: 4442.