573. 'And his feet as [the feet] of a bear' signifies full of fallacies derived from the sense of the letter of the Word read but not understood. By 'feet' is signified the natural that is the ultimate, upon which the heresy that is understood by the 'leopard' continues to exist and as it were walks, and this is the sense of the letter of the Word. And by 'a bear' are signified those who read the Word and do not understand it, whence they have fallacies. That these are signified by 'bears' was plain to me by reason of the bears seen in the spiritual world, and of some there clothed with bear skins, all of whom were those who have read the Word and not seen any doctrinal truth there, who also have confirmed the appearances of truth there, whence [they have] fallacies. Both harmful and harmless bears appear there, and white ones also, but they are distinguished by means of the heads, those that are harmless being like the heads of calves or sheep. Much the same things are signified by 'bears' in the following passages:-
A bear lying in wait for Me has overturned My paths, a lion in hidden places has turned aside My ways, he has made Me desolate Lam. iii 8-11.
I will meet them as a bereaved bear, and there will I devour them like a huge lion, the wild beast of the field shall tear them Hosea xiii 7, 8.
The calf and the young lion shall lie down, and the heifer and the bear shall feed Isa. xi 6, 7.
A second beast coming up out of the sea like to a bear, and three ribs in its mouths between the teeth Dan. vii 5.
A like thing is signified by:-
The lion and the bear, which David smote, grasping its beard 1 Sam. xvii 34-37; likewise 2 Sam. xvii 8.
[2] The 'lion' and 'bear' are mentioned in those places because by a 'lion' is signified untruth destroying the truths of the Word, and by a 'bear' fallacies are signified, which also destroy but not to such an extent, and it is therefore said in Amos:-
The day of Jehovah, a day of darkness and not light, is as if one who is fleeing from a lion comes upon a bear Amos v 18, 19.
We read in the second book of the Kings:-
That Elisha was mocked by boys, and said to be bald, and that therefore 42 boys were torn to pieces by two bears out of the forest 2 Kings ii 23, 24.
This took place because Elisha was representing the Lord as to the Word (n. 298); and because the 'baldness' signified the Word without the sense of the letter, thus not anything (n. 47), and the number 'forty-two' blasphemy (n. 583); and 'the bears' were signifying the sense of the letter of the Word read indeed but not understood.
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