988. And upon every bird of heaven. That this signifies upon falsities of reasoning, is evident from the signification of “bird.” In the Word “birds” signify intellectual things: those which are gentle, useful, and beautiful, signifying intellectual truths; and those which are fierce, useless, and ugly, signifying intellectual falsities, or falsities of reasoning. (That they signify intellectual things may be seen above, n. 40, 776, 870.) From this it is also evident that “birds” signify reasonings and their falsities. That there may be no doubt let the following passages (in addition to those cited about the raven, n. 866) serve for confirmation.

In Jeremiah:

I will visit upon them in four kinds, saith Jehovah; the sword to slay, and the dogs to drag, and the fowl of heaven, and the beasts of the earth, to devour and to destroy (Jeremiah 15:3).

In Ezekiel:

Upon his ruin all the fowls of the heaven shall dwell, and all the wild animals of the field shall be upon his branches (Ezekiel 31:13).

In Daniel:

At last upon the bird of abominations shall be desolation (Daniel 9:27).

In John:

Babylon is become a hold of every unclean and hateful bird (Revelation 18:2).

Many times it is said in the Prophets that carcasses should be given for meat to the fowl of the air and to the beast of the field (Jeremiah 7:33; 19:7; 34:20; Ezekiel 29:5; 39:4; Psalms 79:2; Isaiah 18:6). By this was signified that they should be destroyed by falsities, which are “birds of heaven” and by evils, or cupidities, which are the “beasts of the earth.”

40. By the “creeping things which the waters bring forth” are signified the memory-knowledges [scientifica] which belong to the external man; by “birds” in general, rational and intellectual things, of which the latter belong to the internal man. That the “creeping things of the waters” or “fishes” signify memory-knowledges, is plain from Isaiah:

I came and there was no man; at My rebuke I dry up the sea, I make the rivers a wilderness; their fish shall stink because there is no water and shall die for thirst; I clothe the heavens with blackness (Isaiah 50:2-3).

[2] But it is still plainer from Ezekiel, where the Lord describes the new temple, or a new church in general, and the man of the church, or a regenerate person; for everyone who is regenerate is a temple of the Lord:

The Lord Jehovah said unto me, These waters that shall issue to the boundary toward the east, and shall come toward the sea, being led into the sea, and the waters shall be healed; and it shall come to pass that every living soul that shall creep forth, whithersoever the water of the rivers shall come, shall live, and there shall be exceeding much fish, because those waters shall come thither, and they shall heal, and everything shall live whither the river cometh; and it shall come to pass that fishers shall stand upon it from En-gedi to En-eglaim, with the spreading of nets shall they be; their fish shall be according to its kind, as the fish of the great sea, exceeding many (Ezekiel 47:8-10).

“Fishers from En-gedi unto En-eglaim” with the “spreading of nets” signify those who shall instruct the natural man in the truths of faith.

[3] That “birds” signify things rational and intellectual, is evident from the Prophets; as in Isaiah:

Calling a bird from the east, the man of My counsel from a distant land (Isaiah 46:11).

And in Jeremiah:

I beheld and lo there was no man, and all the birds of the heavens were fled (Jeremiah 4:25).

In Ezekiel:

I will plant a shoot of a lofty cedar, and it shall lift up a branch, and shall bear fruit, and be a magnificent cedar; and under it shall dwell every fowl of every wing, in the shadow of the branches thereof shall they dwell (Ezekiel 17:22-23).

And in Hosea, speaking of a new church, or of a regenerate man:

And in that day will I make a covenant for them with the wild beast of the field, and with the fowls of heaven, and with the moving thing of the ground (Hosea 2:18).

That “wild beast” does not signify wild beast, nor “bird” bird, must be evident to everyone, for the Lord is said to “make a new covenant” with them.