1659. Inner Meaning
THE contents of this chapter do not look as though they could represent anything. All the chapter talks about is the wars among a number of kings, Abram's rescue of Lot, and finally Melchizedek, so it reads as if it did not have a single heavenly secret buried inside. Still, in the inner meaning, these elements of the story (like all the others) conceal the deepest secrets possible, which follow on in an unbroken chain from those above and lead in an unbroken chain to those below.
[2] The earlier parts spoke of the Lord and his education, and of his outer self, which needed to unite with his inner self by means of knowledge both secular and religious. As noted, though, his outer self harbored obstacles to the union, as a result of his maternal heredity [§§1414, 1444, 1573, 1601-1603]. What interfered had to be thrust out through combat and times of trial before his outer self could become one with his inner, or in other words, before his human quality could become one with his divine. The present chapter therefore discusses those struggles, which the inner sense represents and symbolizes through the wars here described.
Within the church it is known that Melchizedek represented the Lord and as a result that when the subject is Melchizedek the inner sense speaks of the Lord. 1 A further conclusion, logically, is that not only what is said of Melchizedek but everything else too has a representative meaning. After all, not a syllable could have been written in the Word which did not come down from heaven and in which angels consequently do not see heavenly dimensions.
[3] In the earliest times, too, wars represented many things. The people of those times called them Jehovah's Wars, and the sole purpose of the term was to symbolize the struggles of the church and of the people in the church, 2 or in other words, to symbolize the spiritual trials of those people. Spiritual trials are nothing but our battles and wars against the evil in us, so they are fights against the Devil's crew, which stirs up the evil and tries to destroy religion and religious people.
The wars mentioned in the Word have no other meaning, as is obvious from the consideration that the Word cannot treat of anything but the Lord, his kingdom, and the church. This is because it is divine rather than human and accordingly has to do with heaven rather than the world. So the wars of the literal story can mean nothing else in an inner sense. You will be able to see this better below.
Footnotes:
1. Often in Swedenborg's works the phrase "within the church it is known" suggests that common knowledge of the Bible, and particularly the Epistles of Paul, will support an assertion Swedenborg has made. In this case Hebrews 5:6, 10; 6:20; and 7:1-28 point back to Psalm 110 as prophetic of the coming of Christ and specifically identify him as "a priest ... [of] the order of Melchizedek" (Psalms 110:4; New Revised Standard Version); compare §1725:3, where Psalm 110 is quoted and other relevant passages are given. The identification of Melchizedek with a coming savior is attested even before Christianity; see the Dead Sea scroll "The Coming of Melchizedek" (11Q13; Wise and others 2005, 590-593). For more on this sort of reference to "the knowledge of the church today," see note 1 in §654, and note 1 in §1563 in this volume. [SS, FLS]
2. A book named Jehovah's Wars is mentioned in Numbers 21:14; for more discussion by Swedenborg, see §1664:11-12. See also note 1 in §1756. [LHC]
