9371. THE INTERNAL SENSE.

Verses 1-2. And He said unto Moses, Come up unto Jehovah, thou and Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel; and bow yourselves afar off; and Moses, he alone, shall come near unto Jehovah; and they shall not come near; and the people shall not come up with him. “And He said unto Moses,” signifies that which concerns the Word in general; “come up unto Jehovah,” signifies conjunction with the Lord; “thou and Aaron,” signifies the Word in the internal sense and the external sense; “Nadab and Abihu,” signifies doctrine from both senses; “and seventy of the elders of Israel,” signifies the chief truths of the church which are of the Word, or of doctrine, and which agree with good; “and bow yourselves afar off,” signifies humiliation and adoration from the heart, and then the influx of the Lord; “and Moses, he alone, shall come near unto Jehovah,” signifies the conjunction and presence of the Lord through the Word in general; “and they shall not come near,” signifies no separate conjunction and presence; “and the people shall not come up with him,” signifies no conjunction whatever with the external apart from the internal.

1672. And the kings that were with him. That this signifies the apparent truth which is of that good, is evident from the signification of “kings” in the Word. “Kings,” “kingdoms,” and “peoples,” in the historical and the prophetical parts of the Word, signify truths and the things which are of truths, as may be abundantly confirmed. In the Word an accurate distinction is made between a “people” and a “nation;” by a “people” are signified truths, and by a “nation” goods, as before shown (n. 1259, 1260). “Kings” are predicated of peoples, but not so much of nations. Before the sons of Israel sought for kings, they were a nation, and represented good, or the celestial; but after they desired a king, and received one, they became a people, and did not represent good or the celestial, but truth or the spiritual; which was the reason why this was imputed to them as a fault (see 1 Samuel 8:7-22, concerning which subject, of the Lord’s Divine mercy elsewhere). As Chedorlaomer is named here, and it is added, “the kings that were with him,” both good and truth are signified; by “Chedorlaomer,” good, and by “the kings,” truth. But what was the quality of the good and truth at the beginning of the Lord’s temptations has already been stated.

7248. I have been told that the inhabitants of that planet who, when they die and become spirits, appear on this side of it derive the greatest pleasure out of acts of plunder, and most especially out of eating from the plunder. The delight they experience when they think about eating from the plunder was conveyed to me, and I perceived that it was very great. The fact that people with that kind of bestial nature have also inhabited our own planet is evident from the history of various nations, and also from the inhabitants of the land of Canaan, 1 Samuel 30:16, as well as from the Jewish and Israelite nation in David's time, in that they made raids every year on nations, pillaged them, and rejoiced in the pillage. So far as these inhabitants of the planet Venus are concerned, they do indeed find pleasure in acts of plunder; yet they are not cruel. They throw people whom they despoil into water, using that as the method to put them to death; but they keep alive those they can. They afterwards bury those whom they have put to death in that way, which shows that there is some humanity in them, unlike the Jews, whose delight it was to cast aside those they killed and expose them to be devoured by wild animals of the forest or by birds, and sometimes to put them to death in a savage and cruel manner, 2 Samuel 12:31. How much delight the Jews took in such practices I was also allowed to recognize in the sphere conveyed to me from those who, in great numbers, quickly came near and then fled.