7668. 'Go now, you young men, and serve Jehovah' means that those guided by truths that have been corroborated will be left alone, in order that they may worship the Lord. This is clear from the meaning of the command 'go' as the intimation that they will be left alone, as above in 7658; from the meaning of 'young men' as corroborated truths, dealt with below; and from the meaning of 'serving Jehovah' as worshipping the Lord, as above in 7654, 7664. The reason why 'young men' means those guided by truths that have been corroborated is that by sons, boys, young men, men, and old men' are meant aspects of intelligence and wisdom in their true order. Such aspects instead of those male persons are understood in heaven; for those in heaven possess spiritual ideas which are such that images from the purely natural order or the world cannot enter them without being instantly sloughed off and transformed into the kinds of images that are more in keeping with the wisdom of heaven and with angelic thought. This is why 'sons, boys, young men, men, and old men' cannot in the spiritual sense mean those male persons, only corresponding spiritual realities, which are aspects of intelligence and wisdom. The fact that these are meant is plainly evident from the internal sense of the places in the Word where they are mentioned.

[2] In the Word 'young men' is used to mean those who have intelligence, or - on the level of abstract ideas on which angels think - intelligence itself. And since intelligence is meant by them, so is firmly established truth since this belongs to intelligence. Also the expression which is used here in the original language to denote young men is derived from strength and power, which truth receives from good, and so which firmly established truth receives. And this name is therefore applied to the Lord in Zechariah,

O sword, rise up against My shepherd, and against the (young) man, My neighbour. Strike the shepherd, and the sheep are scattered. Zechariah 13:7.

These words were spoken in reference to the Lord, see Matthew 26:31. And also in Jeremiah,

How long do you wander around, O estranged daughter? Jehovah has created a new thing on the earth, a woman has surrounded a (young) man. Jeremiah 31:22.

[3] Another word for 'young men in the original language stands for intelligence, and so for the truth that belongs to it, in Amos,

I have sent the pestilence upon you in the way of Egypt, I have killed your young men with the sword, along with captured horses. ¹ Amos 4:10.

'The way of Egypt' stands for perverted factual knowledge, young men who have been killed' for truths which have as a result been destroyed, and 'captured horses' for an understanding that has been led into error.

[4] In the same prophet,

They will wander from sea to sea, and from the north even to the east; they will run to and fro to seek the Word of Jehovah, and will not find it. On that day the beautiful virgins and the young men will faint from thirst. Amos 8:12-13.

'The beautiful virgins' stands for the affection for truth, 'the young men' for intelligence, and 'fainting from thirst' for being deprived of truth; and this is why it says 'they will run to and fro to seek the Word of Jehovah, and will not find it'. The fact that neither beautiful virgins, nor young men, nor fainting because of thirst are meant here is self-evident.

In Jeremiah,

Death has come up through our windows, it has entered our palaces, cutting off the young child from the street, young men from the lanes. Jeremiah 9:11.

In the same prophet,

How is the city of glory not forsaken, the city of My joy? Therefore her young men will fall in her streets. Jeremiah 49:25-26; 50:30.

In the same prophet,

Hear now, all peoples, see my sorrow; my virgins and my young men have gone into captivity. Lamentations 1:18.

In these places 'young men' stands for the truths that belong to intelligence.

Voetnoten:

6465. 'And was gathered to his peoples' means that [spiritual good] was within the forms of good and the truths of the natural which sprang from itself. This is clear from what is said above in 6451, where similar words occur; see what has been brought forward there about the rise and the life of spiritual good, which is 'Israel', within the forms of good and the truths of the lower natural, which are 'his sons' and 'the twelve tribes'. To take further the idea of the rise of interior things within exterior ones, it should be recognized that all things, not only those with the human being but also those in the entire natural order, come into existence through a series of formations, so that posterior things are brought into existence by means of formations from prior things. Consequently each formation comes into existence as that which is separate from any other; yet the posterior is dependent on what is prior to it, so dependent that it cannot remain in existence without what is prior. For what is posterior is held in connection with and has its form preserved by what is prior. From this it may also be seen that what is posterior contains within itself all things that are prior to it in their proper order. It is like modes ¹ and the forces proceeding from those modes as underlying substances. This is how it is with a person's interiors and exteriors, and also how it is with the things that make up the life he has.

[2] Unless one conceives interior things and exterior things in a person as entities formed in the way just described, one cannot begin to have any idea of the external man and the internal man or of the flowing of the one into the other, let alone of the rise and the life of the interior man or the spirit, and of what that man is like when the external, the bodily part, is separated through death. If a person conceives exterior things and interior ones as a continuous progression into what is purer and purer, so that through that continuity they are inseparable, and are not therefore made distinct through a series of formations of posterior things from prior ones, that person cannot help supposing that when the external dies the internal dies too. For he thinks that they are inseparable, and because they are inseparable, continuing one into the other, that when one dies, so does the other; for one takes the other with it. These matters have been mentioned so that people may know that the internal and the external are distinct and separate from each other, and that interior things and exterior ones follow one another in consecutive order, also that all interior things exist together within exterior ones, or what amounts to the same, that all prior things exist within posterior ones, which is the subject in the internal sense of the verses under consideration here.

Voetnoten: