6945. 'For they will say, Jehovah has not appeared to you' means the Divine within the Lord's Human. This is clear from the meaning of saying' as perception, dealt with often, in this instance the perception of those who belong to the spiritual Church; and from the meaning of 'Jehovah has appeared' as the appearance of the Lord's Divine within His Human. The fact that this kind of appearance is meant by a visual appearance is self-evident; and the fact that 'Jehovah' is the Lord in respect of the Divine itself and in respect of the Divine Human is dealt with in 1736, 2004, 2005, 2018, 2025, 2156, 2329, 2921, 3023, 3035, 5041, 5663, 6281, 6303, 6905. That 'Jehovah has appeared' means the appearance of the Lord's Divine within His Human is also evident from the consideration that His Divine cannot appear to anyone, not even to an angel, except through the Divine Human; nor can the Divine Human except through Divine Truth which goes forth from Him. The subject here in the internal sense is the deliverance of those who belonged to the spiritual Church. Their deliverance was effected by means of the Lord's Coming into the world, see 2661, 2716, 3969, 6854, 6914; and these specifically were saved by means of the Lord's Divine Human, 2716, 2833, 2834.

[2] The implications of this - that those who belong to that Church will not be in possession of faith and so will be unreceptive of what the law from God, represented by 'Moses', says, that is, what the Word says, unless they see signs are as follows: Because they belong to the spiritual Church they do not have a perception of truth from good as people who are celestial do. Instead they acknowledge as the truth all the religious teaching of their Church which they have substantiated for themselves, which means that compared with those who are celestial they dwell in obscurity, 1718, 2831, 2849, 2935, 2937, 3833, 6427, 6500, 6865. This is also made perfectly clear by the fact that they do not at all comprehend how the Lord's Human is able to be Divine, or that God's love within the Human makes it so. For they fix their thought on what is human as they know of it in people generally and do not diverge from this when they think of the Lord; so their minds are in a tangle. The same thing is again made clear by the fact that they also fail to comprehend how a person can be living after death and in that life can have the senses, such as sight, hearing, touch, and smell, or can exist there in a human form. The idea that a person is like this when he lays aside his body along with its senses and members appears to them to be very far from the truth. Thus they are enmeshed in impressions received by the senses and in factual knowledge and illusions that are products of those impressions. If they did not believe therefore that the body is to be rejoined to the soul they would have no belief in any resurrection at all.

[3] From all this one may recognize quite clearly how much obscurity they dwell in regarding the things of heaven. It explains why they cannot have any faith implanted in them at all unless the Lord withholds them from falsities by great force. And since such a force did not exist before the Lord's Coming, only after His Coming when He had made the Human within Himself Divine, they could not be rescued from the lower earth where they were being molested by falsities and be raised to heaven until after the Lord's resurrection, 6914. This then is the reason why it is said that they will not believe and so will be unreceptive of what the law of God, that is, what God's truth, says unless they see proof that it is the truth, which is to say, unless they see signs, described in what follows immediately below.

2935. 'Let him give me the cave of Machpelah [which is his]' means the obscurity of faith [that was theirs]. This is clear from the meaning of 'a cave' as obscurity, dealt with in 2463, and from the meaning of 'Machpelah' as faith which is enveloped in obscurity. The reason 'a cave' means obscurity is that it is a place filled with darkness. When reference is made to a mountain cave - as in Genesis 19:30, where it is said that Lot lived in a mountain cave - obscurity as regards good is meant, but when reference is made to the cave in the field of Machpelah obscurity as regards truth is meant. Here, because the expression 'the cave of Machpelah' is used - Machpelah being the field at the end of which the cave was situated - an obscurity as regards truth, or what amounts to the same, as regards faith is meant. From this it is also evident that Machpelah is faith which is enveloped in obscurity.

[2] Those who are being regenerated and becoming spiritual are very much in obscurity as regards truth. With them good from the Lord is indeed flowing in, but truth less so. Consequently a parallelism and correspondence exists with man between the Lord and good, but not between Him and truth, see 1832. The chief reason for this is that men do not know what good is, and if they did know they would still not believe it at heart. And as long as their good is enveloped in obscurity, so too is their truth, for it is from good that all truth springs. Or to be more explicit, the idea that the Lord is Good itself, and that everything which in itself is a manifestation of love to Him and of charity towards the neighbour is good, and that everything which declares and confirms this is truth, they do not know except in an extremely obscure way. Indeed they even entertain doubts, and allow reasonings to enter in against those considerations. And as long as their state is such, the light of truth from the Lord cannot flow in. Indeed they think of the Lord as they do of another human being and not of Him as God; and they model their idea of love to Him on some worldly kind of love. What genuine affection that stems from charity towards the neighbour is they scarcely know at all, or even what charity is and what the neighbour is. Yet these are essentials. From this one may recognize the great obscurity in which spiritual people are and which is all the greater before regeneration has taken place, which state is the subject here.