221. (5) Likewise by the externals of the temple at Jerusalem. This is because heaven and the church were represented by the temple as well as by the tabernacle, the temple representing the heaven in which spiritual angels dwell, and the tabernacle the heaven where celestial angels dwell. Spiritual angels are those who are in wisdom from the Word, celestial angels those who are in love from the Word. That the temple at Jerusalem signified, in the highest sense, the Lord's Divine Human, He teaches in John:
Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up. He spoke of the temple of His body (2:19, 21)
and where the Lord is meant, the Word also is meant, because He is the Word. As then the interiors of the temple represented the interiors of heaven and the church, thus also of the Word, so its exteriors represented and signified the exteriors of heaven and the church, thus also of the Word, which belong to the sense of its letter. Of the exteriors of the temple we read:
That they were built of whole stone [unhewn] and of cedar within; and that all its walls were carved inside with cherubs and palms and open flowers; and the floor was covered with gold (1 Kings 6:7, 29, 30).
By all these things the externals of the Word, which are the holy things of the sense of its letter, are signified.