49. His feet were like fine brass, as though fired in a furnace. (1:15) This symbolizes natural Divine good.

The Lord's feet symbolize His natural Divinity. Fire or being fired symbolizes goodness. And fine brass symbolizes the natural goodness of truth. Consequently the feet of the Son of Man like fine brass, as though fired in a furnace, symbolize natural Divine good.

His feet have this symbolic meaning because of their correspondence.

Present in the Lord, and so emanating from the Lord, are a celestial Divinity, a spiritual Divinity, and a natural Divinity. His celestial Divinity is meant by the head of the Son of Man; His spiritual Divinity by His eyes and by His breast girded with a golden girdle; and His natural Divinity by His feet.

[2] Because these three elements are present in the Lord, therefore the same three are also present in the angelic heaven. The third or highest heaven exists on the celestial Divine level, the second or middle heaven on the spiritual Divine level, and the first or lowest heaven on the natural Divine level. The like is the case with the church on earth. For the whole of heaven is, in the Lord's sight, like a single person, in which those who are governed by the Lord's celestial Divinity form the head, and those who are governed by His spiritual Divinity form the trunk, while those who are governed by His natural Divinity form the feet.

For this reason, too, every person, having been created in the image of God, has in him the same three degrees, and as they are opened he becomes an angel either of the third heaven, or of the second, or of the last.

It is owing to this also that the Word contains three levels of meaning - a celestial one, a spiritual one, and a natural one.

The reality of this may be seen in Angelic Wisdom Regarding Divine Love and Wisdom, particularly in Part Three, in which we discussed these three degrees.

To be shown that feet, the soles of the feet, and heels correspond to natural attributes in people, and that in the Word, therefore, they symbolize natural attributes, see in Arcana Coelestia (The Secrets of Heaven), published in London, nos. 2162 and 4938-4952.

[3] Natural Divine good is also symbolically meant by feet in the following passages. In Daniel:

I lifted my eyes and looked; behold, a... man clothed in linen garments, whose loins were girded with the gold of Uphaz! And his body was like beryl, and... his eyes like torches of fire, his arms and his feet like the sheen of burnished bronze. (Daniel 10:5-6)

In the book of Revelation:

I saw... an angel coming down from heaven, ...his feet like pillars of fire. (Revelation 10:1)

And in Ezekiel:

(The feet of the cherubim) sparkled like the sheen of burnished bronze. (Ezekiel 1:7)

Angels and cherubim so appeared for the reason that the Lord's Divinity was represented in them.

[4] Since the Lord's church exists below the heavens, thus under the Lord's feet, it is therefore called His footstool in the following places:

The glory of Lebanon shall come to you..., to beautify the place of My sanctuary; ...I will make the place of My feet honorable. And... they shall bow themselves at the soles of your feet. (Isaiah 60:13-14)

Heaven is My throne and the earth is My footstool. (Isaiah 66:1)

(God) does not remember His footstool in the day of His anger. (Lamentations 2:1)

...worship (Jehovah) in the direction of His footstool. (Psalms 99:5)

Behold, we heard of it in Ephrathah (Bethlehem).... We will go into His dwelling places, we will bow ourselves at His footstool. (Psalms 132:6-7)

That is why worshipers fell at the Lord's feet (Matthew 28:9, Mark 5:22, Luke 8:41, John 11:32), and why they kissed His feet and wiped them with their hair (Luke 7:37-38, 44-46, John 11:2; 12:3).

[5] Because feet symbolize the natural self, therefore the Lord said to Peter, when He washed Peter's feet,

He who is washed needs only to have his feet washed, and he is completely clean. (John 13:10)

To wash the feet is to purify the natural self. When it has been purified, the whole self also is purified, as we showed many times in Arcana Coelestia (The Secrets of Heaven), and in The Doctrines of the New Jerusalem. ¹ The natural self, which is also the outer self, is purified when it refrains from the evils which the spiritual or inner self sees to be evils and ones to be shunned.

[6] Now because the feet mean the natural component of a person, and this perverts everything if it is not washed or purified, therefore the Lord says,

If your foot causes you to stumble, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life lame, rather than to have two feet and be cast into hell, into the unquenchable fire... (Mark 9:45)

The foot here does not mean the foot, but the natural self.

The like is meant by treading down the good pasture with the feet and troubling waters with the feet (Ezekiel 32:2; 34:18-19, Daniel 7:7, 19, and elsewhere).

[7] Since the Son of Man means the Lord in relation to the Word, it is apparent that His feet mean the Word in its natural sense as well, which we dealt with at length in The Doctrine of the New Jerusalem Regarding the Sacred Scripture, and also that the Lord came into the world to fulfill everything in the Word and to become thereby an embodiment of the Word, even in its outmost expressions (The Doctrine of the New Jerusalem Regarding the Sacred Scripture, nos. 98-100). But this is a secret for people who will be in the New Jerusalem.

[8] The Lord's natural Divinity was also symbolized by the bronze serpent that Moses was commanded to set up in the wilderness, so that all who had been bitten by serpents were healed by looking at it (Numbers 21:6, 8-9). That this symbolized the Lord's natural Divinity, and that those people are saved who look to it, the Lord Himself teaches in John:

As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life. (John 3:14-15)

The serpent was made of bronze because bronze, like fine brass, symbolizes the natural self in respect to good, as may be seen in no. 775 below.

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1748. 'That not a thread, nor even the latchet of a shoe' means all things, natural and bodily, that were unclean. This is clear from the meaning of 'the latchet of a shoe'. In the Word 'the sole of the foot, and the heel' means the lowest part of the natural, as shown already in 259. The shoe is that which covers the sole and the heel, and therefore 'a shoe' means something still more natural, thus the bodily itself. The exact meaning of a shoe depends on the actual subject. When it has reference to goods it is used in a good sense, but when it has reference to evils it is used in a bad sense, as it is here where the subject is the acquisitions of the king of Sodom, who means evil and falsity. 'The latchet of a shoe' therefore means things, natural and bodily, that are unclean. 'The thread of a shoe' means falsity, and 'the latchet of a shoe' evil, and because the expression denotes something very small the most degraded of all is meant.

[2] That these things are meant by a shoe is clear also from other places in the Word, such as when Jehovah appeared to Moses from the middle of the bush and said to Moses,

Do not come near here; put off your shoes from on your feet, for the place or which you are standing is holy ground. Exodus 3:5.

Similarly, in what the commander of Jehovah's army said to Joshua,

Put off your shoe from on your foot, for the place on which you are standing is holy. Joshua 5:15.

From this anyone may see that a shoe would not take away anything from the holiness provided the individual were holy in himself, but that this was said because 'a shoe' represented the lowest natural and bodily that was to be cast off.

[3] That it is the unclean natural and bodily is also clear in David,

Moab is My washbasin; upon Edom I will cast My shoe. Psalms 60:8.

The commandment to the disciples embodies the same,

If anyone will not receive you or listen to your words, as you leave that house or city, shake off the dust of your feet. Matthew 10:14; Mark 6:11; Luke 9:5.

Here 'dust of your feet' is similar in meaning to a shoe, for 'the sole of the foot' means the lowest natural, that is to say, uncleanness resulting from evil and falsity. They were commanded to do this because at that time they lived in an age of representatives, and imagined that heavenly arcana were stored away solely in these and not in naked truths.

[4] Because 'the shoe' meant the lowest natural, shedding, that is, 'taking off the shoe' meant that the lowest things of nature were to be shed, as in the case, mentioned in Moses, of any man who refused to fulfill the obligations of a brother-in-law,

He who refuses to fulfill the obligations of a brother-in-law - his sister-in-law shall go up to him in the sight of the elders, and she shall remove his shoe from upon his foot and spit in his face; ¹ and she shall answer and say, So will it be done to the man who does not build up his brother's house. And his name will be called in Israel, The house of him who has his shoe taken off. Deuteronomy 25:5-10.

This stands for being devoid of all natural charity.

[5] That 'a shoe' means as well, in a good sense, the lowest natural is clear from the Word, as in Moses when referring to Asher,

Blessed above sons be Asher; let him be acceptable to his brothers, and dipping his foot in oil. Your ² shoe will be iron and bronze. Deuteronomy 33:24-25.

Here 'shoe' stands for the lowest natural - 'iron shoe' for natural truth, 'bronze shoe' for natural good - as is clear from the meaning of iron and bronze, 425, 426. And because the shoe meant the lowest natural and bodily part, it therefore became a figurative expression for the least and basest thing of all, for the lowest natural and bodily part is the basest of all in man; and this is what John the Baptist meant when he said,

There is coming one mightier than I, the latchet of whose shoes I am not worthy to untie. Luke 3:16; Mark 1:7; John 1:27.

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