6541. 'And the inhabitants of the land, the Canaanites, saw the mourning at the threshing-floor of Atad' means a discernment of the grief by the good of the Church. This is clear from the meaning of 'seeing as discerning, dealt with in 2150, 3764, 4727, 5400; from the meaning of 'inhabitant' as good, dealt with in 2268, 2451, 2712, 3613; from the meaning of 'the land', here the land of Canaan in which the Canaanites were inhabitants, as the Church, dealt with in 1413, 1437, 1607, 1866, 3038, 3481, 3705; from the meaning of 'the mourning' as grief, dealt with immediately above in 6539, 6540; and from the meaning of 'the threshing-floor of Atad' as the initial state, which is one of introduction, dealt with in 6537, 6538. From all this it is evident that 'the inhabitants of the land, the Canaanites, saw the mourning at the threshing-floor of Atad' means a discernment of the grief by the good of the Church.

1437. 'They came out to go into the land of Canaan' means that in this manner He drew closer to the celestial things of love. This is clear from the meaning of 'the land of Canaan'. That 'the land of Canaan' represents the Lord's kingdom in heaven and on earth becomes clear from many things in the Word. The reason it does so is that the representative Church was established in that land, a Church in which every single thing represented the Lord and the celestial and spiritual things of His kingdom. This applied not only to religious observances but also to everything associated with those observances - to both the persons who ministered and to the things they administered, and even to the places where the ministrations took place because the representative Church was centred there the land was consequently called 'the Holy Land', even though it was anything but holy, seeing that idolaters and profaners inhabited it. This then is the reason why 'the land of Canaan' here and in what follows means the celestial things of love Indeed the celestial things of love, these alone, exist in the Lord's kingdom and constitute that kingdom