Elijah (referred to as Elias in the New Testament) was the renowned prophet sent to the split kingdoms of Israel and Judah. His first appearance is in Chapter 17 of I Kings where he comes to speak to Ahab, king of Israel. He contends with Ahab, and Ahab’s wife Jezebel, and later Ahab’s son Ahaziah. These contentions have passed down to us in many well known stories.

In II Kings, Chapter 2, Elijah is carried up to heaven in a chariot of fire, and his mantle is given to Elisha, his disciple and successor. Elijah represents the Lord as He comes to us in the Word, that is, the way we think about the Lord when we read the Word (especially the prophetic parts of the Word). Elijah and John the Baptist are similar in their symbolic meaning.

(Ссылки: Arcana Coelestia 5247 [6], 6752, 9372 [2])

9923. 'A bell of gold and a pomegranate, a bell of gold and a pomegranate, on the hem of the robe round about' means that this shall be so everywhere, at every point, that is to say, religious teachings and worship consisting of the interior features of factual knowledge must be so everywhere. This is clear from what has been shown immediately above regarding 'bells' and 'pomegranates'. The repetition of the same words implies that everywhere shall it be so.

3293. 'Two nations are in your womb' means the natural as regards good, interior and exterior, which is conception. This is clear from the meaning of 'nations' as goods, in particular of the Church, dealt with in 1159, 1258, 1260, 1416, 1849. Here goods within the natural are meant, as is evident from the consideration that Esau and Jacob, who at that time were in the womb, represent the Lord's Divine Natural, as will be quite clear from what follows in the part where they are the subject. As with the rational the natural consists of good and of truth. The good within the natural includes all that which goes with natural affection and is called delight, whereas the truth within the natural includes all that which is part of knowledge and is termed factual knowledge. These two must be present in the natural for it to be the natural. By itself and isolated from the delight which belongs to affection, factual knowledge is not anything at all - it being from delight that the natural gets its life, since it is from this that the natural may come to know anything. However, if delight, which is the good of the natural, is devoid of factual knowledge, it is nevertheless something, though only a vital spark, as it is in young children. For the natural to be human therefore it has to consist of both elements, the one perfecting the other. But life itself it receives from good.

[2] As for the good which is the subject here, it is twofold - interior and exterior. Interior good communicates with the interior man, that is, with the rational, while exterior good communicates with the external, that is, with the things that belong to the body, bringing life to the external senses as well as to actions. Without such communication in both parts no one is able to live as a rational being or as a physical organism. Interior communication is what remains with a person after death and then constitutes his natural life, for a spirit too possesses natural life since his spiritual life is encompassed in the natural as the ultimate level of it. For no one is able to think spiritually immediately after death except from the things that belong to his natural. Exterior communication however is what a person has while he is living in the body, but it comes to an end with the death of the body. From these considerations it may now be seen what 'two nations in the womb' means, namely the natural as regards good, interior and exterior. 'In the womb' means, in the internal sense, conception, and this is why at this point the expression 'which is conception' is used in reference to that good.