1742. 'Give me the people and take the acquisitions for yourself' ¹ means that He was to give them life and they would not care about anything else. This is clear from the meaning of 'soul' as life, dealt with already in 1000, 1005, 1040, and from the meaning of 'acquisitions' as all the other things that do not belong properly to life, dealt with immediately below.

[2] The life that evil spirits have and love desperately is the life belonging to the desires that derive from self-love and love of the world - consequently the life that goes with hatred, revenge, and cruelty; and they imagine that no delight can exist in any other kind of life. They are like men, for they have been men and retain this conviction from their life when they were men. They centre all life in the delight that accompanies such desires; indeed they know no other than that this life is the only life, and that when they lose it they will die completely. The nature of the life they love is clear from those like them in the next life. There it is converted into a life that stinks most disgustingly, yet what is remarkable, they perceive that stench as something most delightful, as becomes clear from what has been told from experience in 820, 954.

[3] The same applies to the devils who, having been cast out of the demoniac by the Lord, begged for fear of their lives to be sent into the pigs, Mark 5:7-13. That these were people who during their lifetime had surrendered themselves to foul avarice becomes clear from the fact that such people seem to themselves in the next life to spend their time among pigs. They do so because the life of pigs corresponds to avarice, and therefore they find it delightful, as is clear in what has been told from experience in 939.

脚注:

999. That 'flesh' means what belongs to man's will is clear from the meaning of 'flesh' in its proper sense when used in connection with corrupt mankind. In general 'flesh' means the whole of mankind, in particular the bodily-minded - see what has been shown already in 574. And because it means the whole of mankind, and in particular the bodily-minded, it means that which is specifically man's own, and therefore that which constitutes his will. That which constitutes his will - that is, the will itself - is nothing but evil. Consequently 'flesh', used in reference to mankind because it is such, means all evil desire or all craving. For, as shown several times already, the human will is nothing but evil desire. And because flesh had that meaning, the flesh the people craved in the wilderness had the same representation too. That craving is described in Moses as follows,

The mixed multitude that were among them had a strong craving, and so they wept repeatedly and said, Who will give us flesh to eat? Numbers 11:4.

Here 'flesh' is plainly called 'craving', for it is said that 'they had a strong craving, [saying,] Who will give us flesh?' The same meaning is in like manner clear from what is said further on in that chapter,

While the flesh was yet between their teeth, before they had chewed it, the anger of Jehovah was kindled against the people, and Jehovah smote the people with a very great plague. And the name of that place was called Graves of Craving, for they buried there the people that craved. Numbers 11:33-34.

[2] Anyone may see that such a plague could not possibly have spread among the people simply because they had craved for flesh. It did not spread because of a craving for flesh, for this is quite natural for someone when he has been kept from eating for a long time, as was the case at that time with the people in the wilderness. There was a deeper - a spiritual - cause to the plague, namely, that those people were such as utterly loathed that which was meant by and represented by 'the manna', as is also clear in verse 6 of the same chapter. They desired solely such things as were meant and represented by 'flesh', that is to say, things belonging to their own will, which consisted of evil desires and were in themselves putrid and profane. It was because that Church, as a result of the representation of such things, was a representative Church that the people experienced so severe a plague. For the events that took place among the people were represented in a spiritual way in heaven. In heaven 'the manna' represented what is heavenly, and 'the flesh which they craved' the foulness of their own will. Consequently, such being their nature, they were punished. From these and other places in the Word it becomes clear that 'flesh' means what belongs to the will, here the merely human will. How filthy that will is, see under verse 2 of this chapter where 'the beasts of the earth' is the subject.