466. 'Encompassed with a cloud, and a rainbow overhead' signifies His Natural Divine and Spiritual Divine. By the 'cloud' with which He was encompassed is signified the Natural Divine; and therefore the Word in the natural sense, which also is from Himself thus is His and Himself is signified by 'cloud' (n. 24). By the 'rainbow' is signified the Spiritual Divine, and because this is above the Natural therefore the rainbow was seen overhead. It must be known that the Lord in His Natural Divine is with men, but in the Spiritual Divine with the angels of the spiritual kingdom, and in the Celestial Divine with the angels of the celestial kingdom. Nevertheless He is not divided, but appears to each one in accordance with his quality. The Lord's Spiritual Divine is also signified by the 'rainbow' in Ezekiel:-
Above the expanse of the cherubs the likeness of a throne, and upon that a view of a Man, and out of the fire of His loins as it were a view of the rainbow that is in a cloud on a day of rain, this is a view of the glory of Jehovah Ezek. i 26-28.
By the 'throne' is signified heaven; by the 'Man' upon it the Lord; by 'the fire of His loins' celestial love; and by 'the rainbow' spiritual Divine Truth, which also is of His Divine Wisdom. By the rainbow, of which these things [are said] in Moses:-
I have set My bow in the cloud, which shall be in token of the covenant between Me and the land, and when I shall see it in the cloud, I will remember the eternal covenant Gen. ix 12-17;
nothing else is understood but spiritual Divine Truth in the natural with a man who is being regenerated; for a man, when he is being regenerated, from [being] natural is made spiritual; and because there is then a conjunction of the Lord with him it is therefore said that the bow would be in the cloud 'in token of the covenant'. The 'covenant' signifies conjunction. That there is not any conjunction of the Lord with the man by means of the rainbows in the world is plain.
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