The Bible often talks of people being “troubled.” The internal meaning is pretty straightforward; it indicates a state of spiritual turmoil, usually due to the attack of evil desires and false thinking.
Swedenborg does make it clear, though, that when the Lord is the one doing the troubling – as he does to the Egyptians as the people of Israel are fleeing captivity in Exodus – it is not because the Lord is using evils and falsities to attack anything. The Lord is perfect love and perfect wisdom, and exists beyond our capacity to conceptualize good, evil, truth and falsity. In essence, “good” is defined as what comes from the Lord, and “truth” is defined as the form that goodness takes. To have evil come from the Lord, then — or any idea clothed in a false form — is a contradiction in terms.
So when the Lord is seen “troubling” someone, what they are actually suffering from is their own evil desire and their own false thinking. Evil and falsity wish to attack, and when the Lord deflects them they attack the one who started them in the first place.
Passages from Swedenborg
Arcana Coelestia (Elliott) n. 5222
- That his spirit was troubled’ means a turmoil. This is clear from the meaning of ‘being troubled in spirit’ as being placed in a turmoil. ‘Spirit’ is used here, as it is several times elsewhere in the Word, to mean a person’s interior affection and thought, which also constitute his spirit. The ancients called these his spirit, but specifically they used spirit to mean the interior man who would go on living after the body died. At the present day however, when people read about the spirit where it has that meaning, they understand by it solely the faculty of thought, without anything else subject to it apart from the body in which it resides.
[2] The reason for this different understanding is that people no longer believe that the interior man is a person’s true self. Rather, they believe that the interior man, which ordinary people call the soul or spirit, is merely the faculty of thought without anything else compatible with and subject to it. Consequently they believe that because that faculty has nothing subject to it in which to reside, it will be dissipated after death in the way something air-like or flame-like is dissipated. This is the kind of meaning spirit possesses at the present day, as when the expression ‘troubled in spirit’, ‘saddened in spirit’, ‘joyful in spirit’, or ‘exultant in spirit’ is used. But in reality it is the actual interior man that is called the spirit and that is troubled, saddened, joyful, or exultant. And this interior man existing within an entirely human form, though this is unseen by the eyes of the body – is where the faculty of thought resides.
Arcana Coelestia (Elliott) n. 8214
- ‘And troubled the camp of the Egyptians’ means that as a result all their reaching out with falsity arising from evil recoiled on them. This is clear from the meaning of ‘troubling the camp of the Egyptians’ as the recoiling on them of the falsities arising from evil which they attempted to inflict on those governed by truth and goodness. The reason why such things are meant by these words is that the Lord’s presence among the evil produces that effect. For the evil who wish to do violence to the good by introducing falsity and evil on them expose themselves to retaliatory punishment, which involves the recoiling on themselves of the falsities and evils which they aim to inflict on others.
Arcana Coelestia (Elliott) n. 5220
- Verse 8 And it happened early in the morning, that his spirit was troubled, and he sent and called all the magi of Egypt, and all its wise men; and Pharaoh told them his dream, and there was no one to interpret them for Pharaoh.
‘And it happened early in the morning’ means in that new state. ‘That his spirit was troubled’ means a turmoil. ‘And he sent and called all the magi of Egypt, and its wise men’ means in consulting factual knowledge, interior as well as exterior. ‘And Pharaoh told them the dream’ means regarding things to come. ‘And there was no one to interpret them for Pharaoh’ means that no knowledge existed of what was going to happen.