1408. The events of this verse and later ones happened as written, but the historical facts are representative and the words are each symbolic.

This is true of all the narrative parts of the Word — not only the books of Moses but Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings as well. Nothing but history appears in any of them. Yet although the literal meaning is a history, the inner meaning holds the mysteries of heaven, which lie hidden there. These mysteries can never be seen, as long as we train our mind's eye on the historical details; they are not unveiled until we withdraw our minds from the literal meaning.

The Lord's Word is like a body with a living soul. Anything having to do with the soul remains invisible — to the point that we scarcely believe we even have a soul, let alone that it lives on after death — as long as the body monopolizes our thinking. As soon as concern for our person ebbs from our minds, though, qualities of the soul and of life reveal themselves. That is why everything connected with our body has to die before we can be born anew or regenerate. Not only that, the body itself also has to die, so that we can enter heaven and behold heavenly sights.

[2] The case with the Lord's Word is the same. Its "body" is the contents of the literal meaning, and as long as we fix our minds on those, we see nothing deeper. When they "die," though, [the deeper content] first stands out in plain sight.

Still, the features of the literal sense are like those things in us that belong to the body. Specifically, they are like facts that we glean from our sense impressions and retain in our memory. These are general containers that hold deeper levels inside. ¹ You can see from this that containers are one thing, the vital concepts contained within them are another. The containers are earthly; their vital contents are spiritual and heavenly. So also with the historical passages of the Word, and with the individual words there as well. They are general containers that are earthly and even physical, and they hold spiritual and heavenly features. The latter never enter our field of vision except through the inner meaning.

[3] Anyone can see this merely from the consideration that the Word often speaks in accord with appearances and even in accord with illusions of the senses. It says, for instance, that the Lord feels anger, punishes people, curses them, kills them, and so on, when in fact the inner meaning says the opposite — that the Lord never feels anger or punishes people, let alone cursing or killing them. Yet it does not hurt people to believe in simplicity of heart that the Word is just what they take it to be in the letter, as long as they live lives of neighborly love. The reason it does no harm is that the Word teaches nothing but the need for each of us to live in charity with our neighbor and to love the Lord above all. People who do this have deeper dimensions inside, so any illusions they acquire from the literal meaning are easily dispelled.

Voetnoten:

1143. Despite the fact that these were the actual names of the nations that made up the ancient church, they mean something on an inner level — specifically, the types of worship themselves.

The inhabitants of heaven have no idea what the names, the lands, the nations, and so on are. No concept of such things exists there, only a concept of the entities they symbolize.

The inner meaning gives the Lord's Word life. That meaning is like a soul whose body is the superficial sense. The case resembles that with human beings; when our body dies — when we join the angels — our soul comes alive, and when our soul lives, we no longer know anything of bodily affairs. By the same token, we no longer know what the literal meaning of the Word is, only what its soul is.

[2] The people of the earliest church were like this, and if they were alive today and read the Word, they would not become bogged down in the literal meaning. It would be as if they did not see the letter but only the inner meaning apart from the letter. In fact it would be as if the letter did not exist. So they would fasten on to the life or soul of the Word.

This is the situation throughout the Word, including the historical parts, which report exactly what happened but contain not even one little word that does not enfold hidden meanings on an inner plane. These meanings are never seen by readers who train their attention on the historical context.

Likewise in the current chapter; in the literal sense or the narrative, the names mean the peoples that made up the ancient church, but in the inner sense they mean the doctrinal concepts of those peoples.