Bitter Herbs, Bitter Waters

We have covered how there are approximately four types of fire and four types of water in the Word of God: love of God and the neighbor (fire) and the divine truth supportive of it (water); love of self and the world (fire-reversed) and infernal falsehood supportive of it, eg excuses for sin (water-reversed); transitional fire that is temptation of your heart to dislodge sin and make room for love, and the transitional water that is temptation of your mind to dislodge error and make room for truth; and permanent fire and water which involve forever wallowing in sin and error without any further will on one's part to improve or learn.

Today we will be covering the incident where the Children of Israel arrive at the bitter waters of Marah during their sojourn in the wilderness; and this type of bitter water is transitional, a form of temptation involving a particular aspect of the mind. Let us look at the passage:

" 23 And when they came to Marah, they could not drink of the waters of Marah, for they were bitter: therefore the name of it was called Marah. 24 And the people murmured against Moses, saying, What shall we drink? 25 And he cried unto the LORD; and the LORD shewed him a tree, which when he had cast into the waters, the waters were made sweet: there he made for them a statute and an ordinance, and there he proved them" (Exodus 15:23-25).

As we can see, this is not a pleasant state of mind. Whenever you see the expression "the people murmured against Moses", they are murmuring against the consequences of actually taking religion seriously and putting it into practice in one's life. It says elsewhere that they yearned for the "flesh pots of Egypt", because then they had plenty of meat and drink and were happy; and this is because the flesh prefers an undisturbed life of wallowing in sin and error. When the Lord comes along and throws a wrench into this plan of just wallowing, people get upset; like the Gadarenes were upset that the Lord had cast evil desires out of Legion into the herd of swine which then drowned, they desire the Lord to depart their coasts. 

Let one now note something about the very name "Marah", bitterness; it is not an accident that this name resembles the name "Mary"; for the root of the term Mary is precisely "bitterness". And that is why it is in an episode of the Gospel involving Mary that we see this addressed to her: 

" (Yea, a sword shall pierce through thy own soul also,) that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed" (Luke 2:35). 

In order for there to be spiritual growth, there must be bitterness, spiritual conflict or temptation which dislodges sin and error so that love and wisdom can take their places. It is just like the Children of Israel having to drive out the Canaanite and Perizzite before they can dwell in the land to possess it.

It is also just like the Passover lamb having to be flavored with bitter herbs. If you remember, the Passover lamb had to be roasted with fire and thus flavored; and this is because the destroying angel, so to speak, only passes over and spares the spiritually alive, thus the loving; and in order to become loving, we must undergo bitter preparation to love.

This should come as no surprise. We expect engineers and architects to pass difficult exams because we want bridges and buildings that tend not to collapse at rush hour or when people actually press down on the floors with all of that weighty living one's life stuff.

And more important than bridges and buildings that do not collapse is the crucial question of whether we belong in Heaven or not; God wants people who go to Heaven to be prepared stringently so that they can be trusted around the innocent because innocent themselves.

Returning to the waters of Marah, we note that these were healed by the tossing in of a particular kind of wood. This is because the correspondence "wood" involves good or evil, which is why the Israelites would hang evil people or people whom they assumed were evil on wood; it is why Jesus was a carpenter, in the good sense of wood, and why the Jewish Church which saw Him as cursed called for Him to be hung on wood.

To be clear, the wood that was tossed into those bitter waters was not just good; it carried with it delight with good. For the whole episode represents how divine truth, like learning about and reading the Word, is sometimes tedious and undelightful to us, in modern parlance 'a real drag'. This is because we ourselves -- and that includes me! -- do not always want good or to learn about good or to become better people.

If people are serious about their spiritual lives, they will persevere through periods of bitter waters, periods of various kinds of unpleasant trial; and if they do this, then God will flow into them with the delight of becoming good and learning about good; and those who found the Word tedious but are flowed into with this good in this way will come, as the Children of Israel did, first to sweetened waters and then, as is much the same, "to Elim, where were twelve wells of water, and threescore and ten palm trees", eg divine truth in abundance and the love of learning it in order to become a better person. 

Every one of these trials of the Children of Israel in the wilderness has similar significations to this; in other words, all of it remains relevant today to individuals and groups who are hearing and doing the Word. Likewise significant is the number of years that the Israelites wandered: 40. This is because the correspondence "forty" represents in these contexts at any rate a duration of temptation; that is why we see 40 in the story of the Great Flood, in the time Moses spent in the wilderness, and in the time Jesus spent in the wilderness. The most important thing about forty is not such and such number of days but the fact that those days are devoted to purifying trials.

So the conclusion of the matter is this: persevere in reading the Word and learning about it even during those periods when you find it more tedious, because this too is part of the overall field of play without which you cannot become a better person in God's sight. When parents send their children to school, they know that their children will have unpleasant experiences there. Their children will encounter difficult material, stressful deadlines, experiences that make them ashamed, kids who bully them, and other things similarly unpleasant; but parents still make sure their children go to school because they know it is best for them and their future happiness. It is just like that with the Lord, who knows that we will get hurt in the course of doing our duty in this life. Let us remember that even the wicked undergo many unpleasant experiences while alive; and yet their unpleasant experiences are worthless because they just lead to Hell anyway. But the bitter waters sponsored by God have the power to lead to a better outcome than that and redeem the time lost to suffering. 

Godspeed.

Appendix:

"The genuine affection of truth is to wish to know what is true for the sake of the life in the world, and for the sake of life eternal. These come into temptation when truths begin to fail them, and more when the truths which they know appear undelightful. This temptation derives its origin from the fact that the communication with good has been intercepted. This communication is intercepted as soon as the man comes into his own, for he thus sinks down into the evil of the love of self, or of the world. When he emerges from this state, truths become delightful. This is meant in what follows by the bitter waters being healed by means of the wood cast into them, for by "wood" is signified good" (Arcana Coelestia 8349).

*It is our own self-love and the thoughts which excuse it that "intercept" delight in learning and practicing the things of God.