Nations and peoples, nations and kings

 We have briefly touched on the meaning of nations and peoples, a very frequent double expression in the Word, as being either goods and truths or those in them; or contrarily sins and errors and those in them. The driving out of the nations of Canaan here, sometimes abbreviated Canaanites and Perizzites, involves the driving out of sins and errors from the Church and from the individual:

"20 Behold, I send an Angel before thee, to keep thee in the way, and to bring thee into the place which I have prepared.

21 Beware of him, and obey his voice, provoke him not; for he will not pardon your transgressions: for my name is in him.

22 But if thou shalt indeed obey his voice, and do all that I speak; then I will be an enemy unto thine enemies, and an adversary unto thine adversaries.

23 For mine Angel shall go before thee, and bring thee in unto the Amorites, and the Hittites, and the Perizzites, and the Canaanites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites: and I will cut them off.

24 Thou shalt not bow down to their gods, nor serve them, nor do after their works: but thou shalt utterly overthrow them, and quite break down their images.

25 And ye shall serve the Lord your God, and he shall bless thy bread, and thy water; and I will take sickness away from the midst of thee" (Exodus 20:20-25).

We can see that a direct connection exists between obeying the Angel -- who represents the Lord and especially the Lord as to His Divine Human, Jesus Christ -- and the driving out of the nations. They were not simply to obey the commandments and then, incidentally, enjoy the driving out of their enemies as a kind of disconnected reward; no, driving out sins IS driving out enemies, and obedience to commandments and driving out of nations, evils, are joined at the hip.

When it speaks of not serving their gods, and of breaking rather than worshipping their images, it means the the errors paired with those sins or nations which should not be believed or fed in any way; anymore than excuses to sin should be fed, for that is the usual adultery of sin and error, sin and excuses to sin. 

If we drive out sin, then there is room for the good of love, bread; and room for the truth supportive of the good of love, water. The presence of divine good and divine truth "will take sickness away from the midst of thee" since the Word refers to spiritual sickness when referencing natural sickness. One will briefly touch on a reminder from King Solomon's dedication speech confirming this connection between spiritual sin and natural sickness:

"37 “When there is famine in the land, pestilence or blight or mildew, locusts or grasshoppers; when their enemy besieges them in the land of their [a]cities; whatever plague or whatever sickness there is; 38 whatever prayer, whatever supplication is made by anyone, or by all Your people Israel, when each one knows the plague of his own heart, and spreads out his hands toward this temple" (1 Kings 8:37-38).

We see reference to "the plague of his own heart" because each of us must be regenerated and thus cleansed of various sorts of personal famine, pestilence, blight, mildew, locusts, grasshoppers, sieges by enemies, plagues and sicknesses. When we know the plague of our own hearts, we have acknowledged our sins; because we have been instructed in the sorts of thing which comprise sin and towards which we personally have a predilection. Put in other terms which align with our focus on nations and peoples, we need each of us to be cleansed of Amorites, Hittites, Perizzites, Canaanites, Hivites, and Jebusites.

Do we need to invade a country and then ethnically cleanse its inhabitants ethnic group by ethnic group? We do not. Do we need to approve of someone's invading a country and then zapping the ethnicities it contains one by one? We do not. We just need to know what the spiritual meaning of the natural violence involves so that we are on the same page as our Creator, who wants us to shun sin and error so that good and truth can be implanted into their vacated places.

Does this shunning of sin and error and subsequent implantation of good and truth happen all at once? It does not. We will undergo many tests and trials, spiritually speaking, which are specifically designed to work on our personal issues, the plague of our own heart; the sort of issues which dwell in our Canaan personally and need to be driven out. That gradualism of these sins and errors being driven out of us has been stated in the passage with which we began as:

"29 I will not drive them out from before thee in one year; lest the land become desolate, and the beast of the field multiply against thee.

30 By little and little I will drive them out from before thee, until thou be increased, and inherit the land" (Exodus 23:29-30).

The doctrine of the Church teaches that the Lord's overcoming of temptation and subsequent glorification did not occur all at once but gradually; and also that the Lord's stages of glorification are the mirror image of our being born again. That is to say, the Lord was tempted throughout His life, not just in the wilderness, or we would not have seen references to His being tempted later; and indeed so tempted that He sweated drops of blood in the garden of Gethsemane, for instance. As the Lord Himself said, "The servant is not greater than his lord" (John 13:16). Therefore we too will experience purifying trials "by little and little"; just like the Children of Israel wandered for 40 years, which signifies a duration of temptation more so than a specific time span but amply joins the other references to mean that we regenerate gradually. We do not simply get wet in the baptismal fount and then emerge saintly and dripping; that ritual expresses our willingess to apply the truths of faith to the evils in our hearts and behaviors for an extended period. 

We return now to nations and peoples, goods and truths or sins and errors. The reason why the Word uses correspondences from natural life like nations and peoples lies in the relationship we will have in the next life, whether in Heaven or Hell, with those who are in a like extent of love and truth; or a like extent of evil and falsehood. The extent to which we have been born again will determine our spiritual coordinates, our neighborhood, and our neighbors.

We read in Jeremiah another restatement of the matter: 

"See, I have this day set thee over the nations and over the kingdoms, to root out, and to pull down, and to destroy, and to throw down, to build, and to plant" (1:10).

But wait! We see not nations and peoples here but nations and kingdoms. This substitution occurs because of the pattern in the Word which we have covered in the past whereby one predicate of the will, or heart, can be replaced with another; and one predicate of the understanding, or mind, can be replaced with another. As we have seen, kings involve not earthly monarchs but spiritual truths; or falsehoods in the contrary sense. So here the Lord can replace peoples with kingdoms and mean basically the same thing. Elsewhere we see Him speaking of root, branch and fruit in one place; but of mountain, branch and fruit in another place due to this same predicate substitution of equivalent predicates of the heart or mind, kings for peoples or mountains for roots. 

Likewise: "But ye, O mountains of Israel, ye shall shoot forth your branches, and yield your fruit to my people of Israel; for they are at hand to come" (Ezekiel 36:8).

So we will now look at another instance of this other way of saying nations and peoples, nations and kings:

"Thou shalt also suck the milk of the Gentiles, and shalt suck the breast of kings: and thou shalt know that I the Lord am thy Saviour and thy Redeemer, the mighty One of Jacob" (Isaiah 60:16). 

Here one should note that the best translation would not be "Gentiles" but nations, as you can see from comparing different translations. This is the preferred translation of the Church, and it follows perfectly since "Gentiles" means nations. Obviously you know that we will not be sucking the breasts of any kings or nations and that the literal sense can certainly be disregarded. We deal therefore with being given good and truth by the Lord, sucking the milk of the nations meaning being given good; and sucking the breasts of kings being instructed in truth.

Here we see the same message:

"Thus saith the Lord God, Behold, I will lift up mine hand to the Gentiles, and set up my standard to the people: and they shall bring thy sons in their arms, and thy daughters shall be carried upon their shoulders" (Isaiah 49:22). 

Here we have more grist for the mill of how God uses predicate substitution so as to say in one place nations (Gentiles) and peoples; and in another place nations and kings, or whatsoever other predicate substitution may be.

We will go into more detail about sons and daughters another time, but here in passing one will simply say that they too refer to goods and truths; so that the message again involves being given good and instructed in truth.

Now we will return to the image of suckling and kings for a moment so as to give you extra confirmation that 'there is a there there' and that kings do signify spiritual truths and not earthly potentates:

"They shall call the people unto the mountain; there they shall offer sacrifices of righteousness: for they shall suck of the abundance of the seas, and of treasures hid in the sand" (Deuteronomy 33:19).

Here, instead of suckling the breasts of kings we suck the abundance of the seas, and of treasures hidden in the sand. The correspondence "sea" involves spiritual knowledge. That would be why the bronze laver that King Solomon had made for the Temple gets called a "sea", because it represents the spiritual knowledge that we apply to our evils in the course of washing ourselves up for the Lord. Meantime, when God buries a treasure chest you can be very sure of something: it contains divine good and divine truth, not the keys of a new ferrari or mansion. 

As frequently taught here, stone involves spiritual truth; and sand essentially consists of little stones. Hence the correspondence sand means spiritual truths. If someone were to be told that their progeny would be as the sand of the sea in number, this might come true literally; but still refers spiritually to becoming abundantly instructed in divine truth.

So it is all the same whether we suck the breasts of kings or the abundance of the seas; in either case, whichever predicate of truth the Lord uses, we are being instructed abundantly in truth.

Now we will look at an extract from Revelation:

"23 And the city had no need of the sun, neither of the moon, to shine in it: for the glory of God did lighten it, and the Lamb is the light thereof. 24 And the nations of them which are saved shall walk in the light of it: and the kings of the earth do bring their glory and honour into it" (21:23-24).

Glory means truth, and light or lightening also involves truth; so glory specifically lightens New Jerusalem because divine truth does. Meantime, the nations of those who are in goods will walk in the light of divine truth about the goods we are to make part of our lives. And as for the kings of the earth, this refers to those who are in truths; their bringing their glory and honor into it does not mean that they are making some wonderful contribution of their own so much as that they acknowledge that "their" glory and "their" honor come entirely from the Lord and not from themselves. 

They have made these things part of themselves, but these are the Lord's presence with them and not some wonderful glory and honor of their own. As to the glory and honor, these generally mean divine good and divine truth; so when He comes in the clouds of Heaven with great power and glory it means much the same, as we have seen. Frequently the Lord will use multiple ways of saying good and truth in the same passage in order to underline and add nuance. So we will see nations and peoples mentioned in the same verse as honor and glory; or nations and monarchs mentioned in the same verse as daughters and sons. It comes to much the same, and you will encounter this pattern again and again.

One hopes that this close look at how the Lord will substitute one term for another when they mean the same thing and use equivalent expressions like nations and peoples and nations and monarchs will assist you with picking up these patterns wheresoever you may encounter them in the Word. With these explanations, the Lord's choice of words makes sense; without them, what can they possibly mean? We need to know that suckling the breasts of kings and suckling the abundance of the seas are the same thing, or why the children of Israel were commanded to drive out the Canaanite and Perizzite; otherwise what are we going to think but that totally inappropriate and grody things are meant? We should want to see the Lord in the best possible light, and His Word likewise; besides which, we should actually understand our textbook if we are going to practice it!! Godspeed