There are a number of terms for inns and camps in the Bible‘s original Hebrew and Greek, and they are translated a number of ways. The meanings offered in Swedenborg vary depending on context and specific usage, though all in some way refer to “places” (usually mental or spiritual places) where our good desires and/or true ideas can be collected and put in order.
This makes sense if you think about the idea of “sleeping on it” when you’re troubled by something, or even sleeping after studying to prepare for a test. Your mind needs states of rest to put ideas and emotions in order and prepare them for use — and this is true spiritually as well as naturally.
Swedenborg uses the specific term “lodging place” in reference to several passages in Genesis and Exodus, and identifies it as a reference to the “exterior natural,” which is essentially the outermost layer of the outermost layer of our minds. This is the level where we collect simple sense-based facts: grass is green; the sun is bright; water is wet. We use these simple ideas to build more complex ones, but in and of themselves they stay closely connected to our senses.
Passages from Swedenborg
Arcana Coelestia (Elliott) n. 5495
- ‘To give fodder to his ass, in a lodging-place’ means when they stopped to reflect on the facts present in the exterior natural. This is clear from the meaning of ‘giving fodder to his ass’ as stopping to reflect on facts (for fodder is the food, made up of straw and chaff, that asses are fed with, and therefore all reflection on facts is meant by it since reflection primarily is what nourishes these; as regards ‘an ass’ meaning factual knowledge, see just above in 5492); and from the meaning of a lodging-place’ as the exterior natural. The meaning of ‘a lodging-place’ here as the exterior natural cannot, it is true, be substantiated from other places in the Word; even so it is evident from the consideration that facts are in their proper lodging-place so to speak when they are present in the exterior natural. For the natural has two parts, the exterior natural and the interior natural, see 5118. When facts exist in the exterior natural they have a direct communication with the external senses of the body, where they install themselves and so to speak rest. Therefore the exterior natural provides a lodging-place for facts, that is, a place for them to rest or spend the night.
Arcana Coelestia (Elliott) n. 5656
- ‘And it happened, when we came to the lodging-place and opened our pouches’ means an inspection of the exterior natural. This is clear from the meaning of ‘the lodging-place’ as the exterior natural in general, dealt with in 5495; from the meaning of ‘opening’ as an inspection, for when someone opens something he does so to inspect it; and from the meaning of ‘a pouch’ as the exterior natural more specifically, dealt with in 5497.