wrath, nations and peoples, joy and gladness, grief and weeping, justice and
judgment, and so on. These seem like synonyms when in fact they are not.
Brother, the poor, wasteland, [emptiness,] enemy, sin, anger, nations, joy,
grief, and justice apply to goodness or, in an opposite sense, to evil. Friend,
the needy, desert, void, adversary, wickedness, wrath, peoples, gladness,
weeping, and judgment apply to truth or, in an opposite sense, to falsity. Yet
it seems to readers who do not know this secret that the poor and the needy,
wasteland and desert, emptiness and void, and so on, are the same thing.
They are not, in fact, although they combine to form one thing.
In the Word there are also many things that are paired, such as fire
and flame, gold and silver, bronze and iron, wood and stone, [bread and
water,] bread and wine, purple and fine linen, and so on. Again this is
because fire, gold, bronze, wood, bread, and purple apply to goodness,
while flame, silver, iron, stone, water, wine, and fine linen apply to truth.
Something similar occurs when the Word says we have to love God
with our whole heart and our whole soul,and that God is going to create
in us a new heart and a new spirit.“Heart” applies to the goodness of our
love, while “soul” and “spirit” apply to the truth of our faith.
There are also words that share in both goodness and truth. They are
therefore stated alone without a connection to other terms.
These and many other features, though, stand out only to angels and
to people who are aware of both the earthly meaning and the spiritual
meaning at the same time.251 To show from the Word that there are two-part expressions in it
whose elements seem like repetitions of the same thing would take too
long—it would fill pages and pages. To remove doubt, however, I wish to
list passages that mention nationsand peoplestogether, and others that
mention joyand gladnesstogether.
The following are passages that mention nationsand peoplestogether:
Woe to a sinful nation,to a peopleheavy with wickedness. (Isaiah 1 : 4 )
The peopleswalking in darkness have seen a great light; you have
increased the nation.(Isaiah 9 : 2 , 3 )
Assyria is the rod of my anger. I will send it against a hypocritical nation;
I will command it to go against a peopleof my wrath. (Isaiah 10 : 5 , 6 )
It will happen in that day that the nationswill seek the Root of Jesse,
who stands as a banner for the peoples.(Isaiah 11 : 10 )