7560. 'And will not be gathered home' means which is not in safe keeping. This is clear from the meaning of 'not being gathered home' as not being placed in safe keeping. For 'home' or 'house' is the inner part of the natural mind where goodness and truth reside, and it is also the rational mind, and so where the real person is, dealt with in 3578, 4973, 5023, 7353. Therefore 'being gathered home' is being gathered to an inward position and stored away there. Goodness and truth are stored away inwardly and placed in safe keeping there by the Lord, even in the evil, in order that something of what makes them human may still remain; for without goodness and truth nobody is truly a human being. What are stored away and placed in safe keeping are indeed goodness and truth. Through them communication is effected with heaven; and to the extent that a person is in communication with heaven he is a human being. The evil, including those in hell, are - it is true - in communication with heaven; but they are in no way linked to it through goodness and truth. For the moment that goodness and truth flow down from heaven and enter hell they are turned into evil and falsity, and the link is instantly broken. This is what their communication is like. But through the goodness and truth stored away and placed in safe keeping interiorly a link does exist. With the evil however the truths and forms of good stored away there do no more than enable them to engage in reasoning, think and consequently speak on a sensory level, and thereby substantiate falsity and defend evil. Of all the goodness and truth that have been stored away and placed in safe keeping within them, no more than this can be released; for if more were released the truths and forms of good would be destroyed and so the evil would be left with nothing human at all.

7353. 'And they will rise up and come into your house, and into your bedchamber' means that they will fill the mind, all the way through to its more internal parts. This is clear from the meaning of 'house' as a person's mind, dealt with in 3538, 4973, 5023; and from the meaning of 'bedchamber' as the more internal parts of the mind. The reason why 'bedchamber' means the more internal parts of the mind is that it is a more internal part of the house. The more internal parts are meant by 'chambers', and those that are even more internal by 'bedchambers', in the following places: In Isaiah,

Go away, O people, enter your bedchambers, and shut your door behind you. Hide yourself, so to speak, for a little moment, until the anger passes over. Isaiah 26:20.

In Ezekiel,

He said to me, Have you not seen, son of man, what the elders of the house ¹ of Israel do in the dark, each in the chambers of his own idol? Ezekiel 8:12.

In Moses,

Outside the sword will bereave and out of the chambers terror. Deuteronomy 31:25.

In the second Book of Kings,

Elisha the prophet, who is in Israel, tells the king of Israel the words that you speak in your bed chamber. 2 Kings 6:12.

The ancients compared a person's mind to a house, and the inward parts of a person to chambers. The human mind is indeed like a house, for the things it contains are virtually as distinct from one another as the chambers within a house. Those at the centre are the inmost parts of the mind, while those to the sides are the more external parts there. The ancients compared the latter to forecourts, and the parts which were outside but adjoining parts more internal they compared to porticos.

脚注: