1. The Sacred Scripture, or Word, Is Divine Truth Itself

Everyone says that the Word comes from God, is Divinely inspired, and so is holy. But even so, no one has known before this wherein the Divinity in it lies. For in its letter the Word appears as though written in the ordinary way, in a foreign style, neither as sublime or nor as lucid as writings of the present age seem to be.

As a result, a person who worships nature as God, or in preference to God, and so thinks prompted by self and his own self-interest, and not prompted by heaven in response to the Lord, may easily fall into error regarding the Word, and into scorning it, and when reading it, saying to himself, “What is this? What is that? Is this Divine? Can God, whose wisdom is infinite, speak so? Where is the holiness in it, and what makes it holy, other than some teaching of religion and so conviction?”

10. The twenty-first chapter in the book of Revelation describes the holy Jerusalem in this way, that it had in it a light “like a most precious stone, like a jasper stone, bright as crystal;” that it had “a great and high wall, and twelve gates, and over the gates twelve angels, with names written on them...of the twelve tribes of the children of Israel;” that it had a wall of “a hundred and forty-four cubits, the measure of a man, that is, of an angel;” that the construction of its wall was of jasper, and its foundations of all kinds of precious stones — jasper, sapphire, chalcedony, emerald, sardonyx, sardius, chrysolite, beryl, topaz, chrysoprase, jacinth, and amethyst; that “the twelve gates were twelve pearls;” that the city was “pure gold, like transparent glass;” and that it was square, “its length, breadth, and height...equal, ” measuring “twelve thousand furlongs.” And so on.

All of these particulars must be understood spiritually, as can be seen from the fact that the holy Jerusalem symbolizes a new church to be established by the Lord, as we showed in The Doctrine of the New Jerusalem Regarding the Lord 62-65. And because Jerusalem in this description symbolizes a church, it follows that everything said about it as a city — about its gates, its wall, the foundations of the wall, and about their measurements — contains a spiritual meaning. For matters having to do with the church are spiritual.

[2] We have explained the symbolic meanings of each of these particulars in The New Jerusalem and its Heavenly Doctrine (London, 1758), no. 1. We therefore forgo any further explanation of them here. It is enough for it to be known from that book that there is a spiritual meaning present in each particular of the city’s description, like a soul in its body. Also, that apart from that meaning, nothing relating to the church would be understood in the depictions there, as that the city was of pure gold, with its gates of pearls, its wall of jasper, and the foundations of its wall of precious stones; that the wall was of a hundred and forty-four cubits, the measure of a man, that is, of an angel; that the city itself was twelve thousand furlongs long, wide, and high; and so on.

Someone who has a knowledge of correspondences and knows from it the spiritual sense, understands the meanings of these things — as that the wall and its foundations symbolize doctrine drawn from the Word’s literal sense, and that the numbers 12,144, and 12,000 have similar symbolic meanings, namely all the truths and goods of the church in their entirety.

80. Every Single Constituent of the Word Contains a Marriage of the Lord and the Church, and So a Marriage of Goodness and Truth

The idea that every single constituent of the Word contains a marriage of the Lord and the church, and so a marriage of goodness and truth, is something not seen previously, nor could it have been seen, because the Word’s spiritual sense was not disclosed before, and the marriage can only be seen by means of that sense. For lying concealed within the Word’s literal sense are two other senses, a spiritual one and a celestial one. In the spiritual sense expressions in the Word relate mainly to the church, and in the celestial sense, mainly to the Lord. In the spiritual sense they relate also to Divine truth, and in the celestial sense to Divine goodness. Hence the aforesaid marriage in the Word’s literal sense.

But this marriage is not apparent to anyone unless he knows from the Word’s spiritual and celestial senses the symbolic meanings of the words and names. For some words and names refer to goodness, and some to truth, and some encompass both. Without that knowledge, therefore, the aforesaid marriage in every constituent of the Word cannot be seen.

It is for this reason that this arcanum has not been disclosed previously.