Bears represent the power of the literal external stories and ideas of Bible, separate from their deeper meanings. Since they are wild carnivores, this is usually used in a negative way, showing how people can read the Bible, misunderstand it and twist the ideas they find there to justify their evil desires. But it can also be used in a positive way, showing how people can read the Bible with open minds and draw power from it, even without understanding its true depth.

In 2 Kings 2:24, this signifies the literal sense of the Word separate from its internal sense.

In Daniel 7:5, this signifies the second state of the church when the Word is read, but not truly understood. (Apocalypse Revealed 574[2])

(Referências: Apocalypse Explained 781; Apocalypse Revealed 47; The Apocalypse Explained 781 [10], [12])

47. His head and hair were white like wool, as white as snow. (1:14) This symbolizes the Divine love accompanying Divine wisdom in first things and last.

A person's head symbolizes everything connected with his life, and everything connected with a person's life has some relation to love and wisdom. A head consequently symbolizes both wisdom and love. However, because there is no love without its wisdom, nor wisdom without its love, therefore it is the love accompanying wisdom that is meant by a head; and when describing the Lord, it is the Divine love accompanying Divine wisdom. But on the symbolism of the head in the Word, more will be seen in nos. 538 and 568 below.

Since a head means both love and wisdom in their first forms, it follows accordingly that hair means love and wisdom in their final forms. And because the hair mentioned here describes the Son of Man, who is the Lord in relation to the Word, His hair symbolizes the Divine good connected with love, and the Divine truth connected with wisdom, in the outmost expressions of the Word - the outmost expressions of the Word being those contained in its literal sense.

[2] The idea that the hair of the Son of Man or the Lord symbolizes the Word in this sense may seem absurd, but still it is the truth. This can be seen from passages in the Word that we cited in The Doctrine of the New Jerusalem Regarding the Sacred Scripture, nos. 35 and 49. We showed there as well that Nazirites in the Israelite Church represented the Lord in relation to the Word in its outmost expressions, which is its literal sense, as a nazir in Hebrew is a hair or head of hair. ¹ That is why the power of Samson, who was a Nazirite from the womb, lay in his hair. The Divine truth similarly has power in the literal sense of the Word, as may be seen in the aforementioned Doctrine Regarding the Sacred Scripture, nos. 37-49.

For the same reason, too, the high priest and his sons were strictly forbidden to shave their heads.

For that reason as well, forty-two of the boys who called Elisha a baldhead were torn apart by two she-bears. Like Elijah, Elisha represented the Lord in relation to the Word. A baldhead symbolizes the Word without its outmost expression, which, as said, is its literal sense, and she-bears symbolize this sense of the Word divorced from its inner meaning. Those who so divorce it, moreover, appear in the spiritual world as bears, though only at a distance. It is apparent from this why what happened to the boys happened as it did.

It was, therefore, also the highest disgrace and a mark of extreme mourning to inflict baldness.

[3] Accordingly, when the Israelite nation had completely perverted the literal sense of the Word, this lamentation over them was composed:

Her Nazirites were whiter than snow, brighter white than milk... Darker than blackness is their form. They go unrecognized in the streets. (Lamentations 4:7-8)

Furthermore:

Every head was made bald, and every shoulder shaved bare. (Ezekiel 29:18)

Shame will be on every face, and baldness on all their heads. (Ezekiel 7:18)

So similarly Isaiah 15:2, Jeremiah 48:37, Amos 8:10.

Because the children of Israel by falsities completely dissipated the literal sense of the Word, therefore the prophet Ezekiel was commanded to represent this by shaving his head with a razor and burning a third part with fire, striking a third part with a sword, and scattering a third part to the wind, and by gathering a small amount in his skirts, to cast it, too, afterward into the fire (Ezekiel 5:1-4).

[4] Therefore it is also said in Micah:

Make yourself bald and cut off your hair, because of your precious children; enlarge your baldness like an eagle, for they have departed from you. (Micah 1:16)

The precious children are the church's genuine truths from the Word.

Moreover, because Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, represented Babylon's falsification of the Word and destruction of every truth there, it accordingly came to pass that his hair grew like eagles' feathers (Daniel 4:33).

Since the hair symbolized that holy component of the Word, therefore it is said of Nazirites that they were not to shave the hair of their head, because it was the consecration of God upon their head (Numbers 6:1-21). And therefore it was decreed that the high priest and his sons were not to shave their heads, lest they die and the whole house of Israel be angered (Leviticus 10:6).

[5] Now, because hair symbolizes Divine truth in its outmost expressions, which in the church is the Word in its literal sense, therefore something similar is said also of the Ancient of Days in Daniel:

I watched till the thrones were thrown down, and the Ancient of Days was seated. His garment was as white as snow, and the hair of His head like pure wool. (Daniel 7:9)

That the Ancient of Days is the Lord is clearly apparent in Micah:

You, Bethlehem Ephrathah, though you are little among the thousands of Judah, yet out of you shall come forth to Me the One to be Ruler in Israel, whose goings forth are from antiquity, from days of old. (Micah 5:2)

And in Isaiah, where He is called Everlasting Father (Isaiah 9:6).

[6] From these passages and many others - too many to cite - it can be seen that the head and hair of the Son of Man, which were like wool, as white as snow, mean the Divine expression of love and wisdom in first things and last. And because the Son of Man means the Lord in relation to the Word, it follows that the Word, too, is meant in its first elements and last. Why else should it be that the Lord here in the book of Revelation and the Ancient of Days in Daniel are described even in respect to their hair?

That hair symbolizes the literal sense of the Word is clearly apparent from people in the spiritual world. Those who have scorned the literal sense of the Word appear bald there, and conversely, those who have loved the literal sense of the Word appear possessed of handsome hair.

The head and hair are described as being like wool and like snow because wool symbolizes goodness in outmost expressions, and snow symbolizes truth in outward expressions - as is the case also in Isaiah 1:18 ² - inasmuch as wool comes from sheep, which symbolize the goodness of charity, and snow comes from water, which symbolizes truths of faith.

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