9152. 'He shall repay double' means restoration to the complete amount. This is clear from the meaning of 'making repayment' as undertaking restoration, dealt with in 9087, [9097;] and from the meaning of 'double' as to the complete amount, dealt with in 9103. The present verse and those that follow down to verse 14 deal in the internal sense with a person's loss of the truth of faith, and so with his loss of spiritual life, and the restoration of it; for the truths of faith are the means by which a person is brought to the good of charity and made spiritual. But these matters dealt with in the internal sense of the verses that come immediately after this are for the most part unknown to a person. The reason for this is that people do not know what spiritual life is, nor therefore that this life is life on a more internal level, distinct and separate from natural life, which is that on a more external level. Nor do people know that the Lord imparts spiritual life to a person through his acceptance of the truth of faith within the good of charity. So it is that the matters stated regarding the loss of that life and the restoration of it fall into thick darkness in a person because they are among things he knows nothing about. Yet such matters constitute angelic wisdom, for they are suited to the light in which angels live. When therefore a member of the Church in whom the good of faith is present reads the Word, the angels attach themselves to the person and take delight in him because they delight in the wisdom which flows into them from the Lord through the Word. In this way heaven is linked to mankind; and without the Word that link would not exist. For the nature of the Word is such that not even a tittle or a jot of it in the original language fails to touch angels' affections and link the angels to mankind. I can positively declare this to be so because I have been shown it from heaven.