1887. To call the Word inspired is to say that everything in it, both the narratives and the other parts, contains heavenly qualities (which relate to love and goodness) and spiritual qualities (which relate to faith and truth). In other words, the contents are divine.

What the Lord inspires comes down from him through the heaven of angels and so through the world of spirits all the way to humankind. Among human beings it presents itself in its literal form, but in its first origins it is radically different. In heaven there is no such thing as a plain, ordinary narrative; instead, everything there represents something divine, and no one there perceives it any other way. This can be recognized from the fact that what it holds is inexpressible [2 Corinthians 12:4]. Consequently, unless the narratives represent divine matters and are therefore heavenly, they cannot possibly be divinely inspired.

Only the inner meaning reveals what the Word is like in the heavens, because that is what the Lord's Word in the heavens is.

1405. The nature of the inner meaning, though, as has been transparently demonstrated already [§§64, 647, 813, 1143], requires that each and every particular be understood separately from the literal meaning, as if the literal meaning did not exist. The soul and life of the Word is in the inner meaning, and it does not reveal itself unless the literal meaning vanishes, so to speak.

That is how angels — enabled by the Lord — perceive the Word when we on earth are reading it. ¹

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