352. Of the tribe of Gad twelve thousand were sealed. This symbolizes useful life endeavors, which are the exercises of wisdom springing from the aforesaid love, also in those people who will be in the New Heaven and in the Lord's New Church.

In the highest sense Gad symbolizes omnipotence; in the spiritual sense, goodness of life, which also is useful endeavor; and in the natural sense, work. Here he symbolizes useful life endeavors, because he comes after Reuben and Judah, and celestial love by means of wisdom produces useful endeavors.

There are three things that hang together and cannot be separated: love, wisdom and useful life endeavor. If one is taken away, the other two collapse. (See Angelic Wisdom Regarding Divine Love and Wisdom, nos. 241 297, 316.)

That Gad symbolizes useful life endeavors, called also fruits, can be seen from the derivation of his name from a word meaning a troop or accumulation (Genesis 30:10-11, Joshua 13:24-28). It can be seen, too, from his symbolism in an opposite sense (Isaiah 65:11, Jeremiah 49:1-3).

It should be known that the tribes of Israel here are all distinguished into four groups, as they were in the Urim and Thummim, and as they were in their encampment, and that each group contains three tribes, because the three go together as a unit, like love, wisdom and useful service, and like charity, faith and work. For, as we said, if one is missing, the other two have no reality.

241. We said above that degrees of height are like end, cause and effect, and that love, wisdom and useful endeavor follow in sequence in accordance with these degrees. We will therefore say a few words here about love's being the end, about wisdom's being the cause, and about useful endeavor's being the effect.

Everyone who consults his reason when it is in a state of light can see that a person's love is in all things his end, for what he loves he thinks about, resolves, and does. Consequently he has it as his end. A person can also see in the light of his reason that wisdom is the cause, for he, or rather his love, which is his end, seeks out in the intellect the means by which to achieve its end, thus consulting his wisdom, and these means form the cause by which the end is achieved. It is evident without explanation that useful endeavor is the effect.

One person's love, however, is not the same as another's. Consequently neither is one person's wisdom the same as another's; nor, therefore, his useful endeavor. And because these three are homogeneous, as shown above in nos. 189-194, it follows that whatever the character of the love is in a person, such is the character of the wisdom in him, and such is the character of his useful endeavor.

We say wisdom, but we mean whatever is a matter of his intellect.