Naphtali: expansiveness proceeding from victory over tempation

One of my favourite correspondences of the Writings so far is "Naphtali", an inner meaning expounded upon significantly in Arcana Coelestia. At first glance this might seem arcane as the title of the book, but consider if this passage does not clinically as is possible detail an actual state of mind that human beings experience and can recognise:

Genesis 49:21 - King James Version (KJV) <21> Naphtali is a hind let loose: he giveth goodly words.

"And she called his name Naphtali. That this signifies its quality, namely, the quality of the temptation in which there is victory, and also the quality of the resistance by the natural man, is evident from the signification of “name,” and of “calling a name,” as being quality (see n. 144, 145, 1754, 1896, 2009, 2724, 3421). The quality itself is that which is signified by “Naphtali,” for he was named “Naphtali” from “wrestling.” Hence also by Naphtali is represented this second general truth of the church, for temptation is the means of the conjunction of the internal man with the external, because they are at variance with each other, but are reduced to agreement and correspondence by means of temptations" (Arcana Coelestia 3928).

Notice the verse from Genesis, that it distinctly involves liberation and eloquence. What is more, it involves them in a particular order, such that eloquence succeeds liberation. We know from New Church doctrine that truth proceeds from good: "Truth can originate in many other places, but truth that grows out of the good embraced by charity and received from the Lord—this truth is called whole or upright" (Arcana Coelestia 612:2).

Psalm 111:10 - King James Version (KJV) <10> The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom: a good understanding have all they that do his commandments: his praise endureth for ever.

We see here that everyone who does Jesus' commandments has a corresponding state of understanding, just as bread has corresponding wine, just as flesh has corresponding blood, and just as good has corresponding truth.

Jeremiah 13:15 - King James Version (KJV) <15> Hear ye, and give ear; be not proud: for the Lord hath spoken.

Take this command here, for instance: "be not proud". One might as well have quoted the first of the 10 Commandments, Exodus 20:3, for it comes to much the same thing.

Exodus 20:3 - King James Version (KJV) <3> Thou shalt have no other gods before me.

In any case, what happens to someone who, for instance, obeys the command to "be not proud"? The Bible very much has an answer!

Numbers 12:3 - King James Version (KJV) <3> (Now the man Moses was very meek, above all the men which were upon the face of the earth. )

We also read of Moses the following:

Acts 7:22 - King James Version (KJV) <22> And Moses was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, and was mighty in words and in deeds.

We see here, quite clearly, in these two carefully placed superlatives concerning Moses, that the exact relationship between obedience and understanding our Creator has given us to expect in Psalm 111:10 is indeed operational. We can trust this relationship consistently to work. And that is why any of this is worth attending to at all, because you personally can make use of it anywhere at all. Sincere work on personal self-love will infallibly correlate with greater understanding.

Psalm 111:10 - King James Version (KJV) <10> The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom: a good understanding have all they that do his commandments: his praise endureth for ever.

One can even prove this, immediately, by referencing the way that arrogant people think about themselves. Commonly we see people described as having an ego the size of a planet. Of course, the reality is that each one of us amounts to something like a speck of dust in sunbeam which is mighty lucky to be heated up by such a sun but, to say the least, not a pumba!

None of us are pumbas, which truth escapes the proud. But as to the humbler person, they recognise that other beings with special needs of their own exist and know that they are themselves a tiny speck in God's massive work of art. Therefore, the humbler person already has a better understanding of the actual situation than the person whose arrogance necessarily involves them in a hyperinflated sense of self-worth.

One has all along been leading back to Naphtali, which like all the above is a marriage as of good and truth, in this case an interrelation of victory over temptation with eloquent articulation as its perceptible result. One concludes by underlining that this is not whipped cream. This happened tonight, this state of Naphtali. It is a real spiritual and mental operation which happens in people's lives as surely as full moons and power bills if people ever fight any temptation, as if of themselves but from the Lord, in the formula with which we are well familiar.

Does it make sense now, why Paul might say "take captive every thought"? Naphtali is, after all, "a hind set loosed", and the captivity of every thought to which Paul refers is the very liberty of Christ and its associated understanding. The moral of the story is this: the names in the Bible would be essentially useless to us if they had no significance in relation to genuine mental operations and states of the soul, whether in the collective or the singular, and to Jesus. We do not need a bunch of genealogical data, we need help. Which would you prefer, if sinking in quicksand? Would you like someone to throw you a rope or read you a list of names that are just names?

And the throwing of a rope, the conveyance of truths that are effectively salvific, is not really optional if the actual process or mental operation above is to occur. We read further on in the commentary on Naphtali that "they who who do not affirm and acknowledge the good and truth of faith and charity cannot come into any combat of temptation, because there is nothing within which offers resistance to the evil and falsity to which natural delight persuades." Let me just refer you to where Paul says the exact same thing 18 centuries before: Romans 7:7

Romans 7:7 - King James Version (KJV) <7> What shall we say then? Is the law sin? God forbid. Nay, I had not known sin, but by the law: for I had not known lust, except the law had said, Thou shalt not covet. 

We effectively come to a gradual awareness that our boats are sinking, and an awareness as gradual of the leaks in the boat, and the exact way in which to plug the leaks in the boat. We cannot do this but with doctrine, and not just the hearing thereof but the doing. For out of doing what is good we enjoy greater understanding. When we make excuses for other people in response to the accusations inserted into our trains of thought, we experience precisely this sort of combat.

But unless we know that there is a point to excusing others rather than accusing them -- that it is better for the neighbour as well as for ourselves -- then we will not engage in this process of making excuses in response to accusations, of putting off the Old Mind and putting on the New. It is when you know that a given type of thought is evil that the evil spirits associated with you apply themselves to getting you to appropriate their insertions of the particular thoughts in question into your mind.

If you consciously enjoy an evil thought, in this situation, then you have cherished it as the Writings put it, or have been "led away and enticed by your lusts", as James would have it. But if you deliberately refuse to give the thought your assent and approval, throwing as it were cold water upon its ardour, then there is victory, as if yourself but from the Lord. But before victory there is struggle, and this struggle is an uncomfortable combat indeed, but not like any other struggle that you ever face.

May Jesus show you the turbulence of temptation and the constructive calm that follows such an inner maelstrom, so that the verses become for you in deadly earnest. Amen

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Preached at Discord New Church, a Swedenborgian chat server