10123. 'And you shall cleanse from sin on the altar' means purification from evils in heaven and in the Church. This is clear from the meaning of 'cleansing' as purifying; from the meaning of 'sin' as evil, for all evil that a person is guilty of is called sin; and from the meaning of 'the altar' as that which is representative of the Lord in regard to Divine Good and of the worship of Him, dealt with in 9714, 9964, at this point in respect of Divine Good in heaven and in the Church. The subject is still the Lord's influx, presence, and reception there, and for this reason 'the altar' also means heaven and the Church in respect of reception of Divine Good from the Lord there. For that which is Divine and the Lord's is what makes heaven and the Church; this is so because the Lord dwells there in what is His and not in what is a person's own. This too explains why 'the altar' also means the actual person in whom heaven is present or in whom the Church is present, and so in whom the Lord is present; and in the abstract sense, in which no actual person is envisaged, 'the altar' means the Good itself which comes from the Lord and is present with the angels of heaven and with members of the Church.

[2] The word 'altar' is used with these meanings in John,

I was given a reed like a rod, and the angel stood and said to me, Measure the temple of God, and the altar, and those who worship in it. Revelation 11:1.

Here 'the temple of God, and the altar' are heaven and the Church, 'the temple' being the spiritual Church and 'the altar' the celestial Church. 'Measuring' means recognizing the amount and the essential nature of truth and good; and this is why it says not only 'Measure the temple, and the altar' but also 'those who worship in it'. For the meaning of 'the temple' as the spiritual Church, see 3720; and for that of 'measuring' as recognizing the state of affairs as regards truth and good, 9603. In the same book,

I heard another angel from the altar saying, O Lord God Almighty, true and righteous are Your judgements. Revelation 16:7.

'From the altar' means from the inmost heaven, where celestial good reigns, celestial good being the good of love to the Lord. In Jeremiah,

The Lord has abandoned His altar, He has abominated His sanctuary. Lamentations 2:7.

'Abandoning the altar and the sanctuary' refers to everything of the Church, 'the altar' being everything of the Church as regards good, and 'the sanctuary' everything of the Church as regards truth.

6834. 'And the bramble bush was not at all being consumed' means Divine Truth united to Divine Good in the natural. This is clear from the meaning of 'the bramble bush' as true factual knowledge, dealt with above in 6831, 6833, but in this instance as Divine Truth in the natural, since the description has reference to the Lord (the natural is meant because there truth takes the form of factual knowledge); and from the meaning of 'not being consumed by the fire' as not being reduced to nothing by the good of Divine Love, 'fire' being the good of Divine Love, see just above in 6832. Thus the fact that it was united to it, that is to say, Divine Truth was united to Divine Good in the natural, is what is meant by the words used here. It is their meaning in the highest sense, in which the Lord is the subject. The implications of this are as follows: The Divine Good of Divine Love is the actual fire of the sun in the next life. That fire is so hot that if its heat were to fall on someone, even on an angel of the inmost heaven, without a shield to moderate it, he would be deprived of all conscious feeling and would be destroyed. This is how hot God's love is in the Lord. But when the Lord was in the world and united the Human Essence to the Divine Essence, He received in His Human the fire of that love and there united it to truth when He made Himself the law of God. This then is what one should understand by the statement that Divine Truth was united to Divine Good within the natural.