AC 1442 - The Oak Grove of Moreh

AC 1443

As regards "the oak-grove Moreh"
being the first perception,
the case is this.
There are with a person
things intellectual, things rational, and things of memory;
his inmost things are intellectual,
his interior things are rational,
and his exterior things are those of the memory;
all these are called his spiritual things,
which are in the order here given.
The intellectual things of the celestial person
are compared to a garden of trees of every kind;
his rational things,
to a forest of cedars and similar trees,
such as there were in Lebanon;
but his memory-knowledges
are compared to oak-groves,
and this from their intertwined branches
such as are those of the oak.
By trees themselves are meant perceptions;
as by the trees of the garden of Eden eastward,
inmost perceptions, or those of intellectual things
by the trees of the forest of Lebanon,
interior perceptions, or those of rational things;
but by the trees of an oak-grove,
exterior perceptions,
or those of memory-knowledges,
which belong to the external person.
So it is that "the oak-grove Moreh"
means the Lord's first perception;
for He was as yet a child,
and His spiritual things were not more interior than this.
Besides, the oak-grove Moreh
was where the sons of Israel also first came
when they passed over the Jordan
and saw the land of Canaan,
concerning which in Moses:

You shall put the blessing upon Mount Gerizim,
and the curse upon Mount Ebal.
Are they not beyond Jordan,
behind the way of the going down of the sun,
in the land of the Canaanite that dwells in the plain
over against Gilgal, beside the oak-groves of Moreh.
(Deuteronomy 11:29-30);

by which also is meant the first of perception,
for the entrance of the sons of Israel represents
the entrance of the faithful into the Lord's kingdom.