You Shall Not Commit Adultery

For a description of these resources, read the Introduction to Section D (PDF).

Print this section: You Shall Not Commit Adultery (PDF).

Overview

The commandment, You shall not commit adultery, has different levels of meaning. Here are some of the things that are meant by adultery:

  • Committing adultery; unlawful joining of bodies (unlawful by God’s principles of wise and loving behavior)

  • Turning away from marriage, or turning others away from it

  • Entertaining, dwelling on, or nurturing offensive or pornographic desires

  • Harboring lustful intent

  • Looking at another person with intent to lust

  • Entertaining filthy thoughts

  • Filthy words and/or actions

  • Being unmerciful

  • Savagery

  • Cruelty

  • Denying the holiness of the Word of God

  • Profaning the Word of God

    • Adulterating what is good

    • Falsifying what is true

  • Being unfaithful to what is good and true

  • Ridiculing in heart the good and true things of church and religion

  • Denying the divinity of the Lord

  • Claiming divine power for yourself

Resource 1: Secrets of Heaven

General: 

  • In general, to commit adultery means to upset the laws of order.

Earthly (literal) meaning: In the literal sense, to commit adultery means to...

  • Commit adulteries.

  • Be unlawfully joined as to bodies.

  • Ask counsel of the delight of some lust.

Inner representative meaning: In the “inner representative” sense to commit adultery means...

  • To worship idols and other gods...

    • By means of such things as are of the church,

  • Thus idolatry, external and internal.

Spiritual meaning: The spiritual meaning of this commandment has to do with...

  • Good and truth: To commit adultery means to...

    • Adulterate good and pervert truth.

      • Note: The consequence of this is that falsities are accepted.

    • Adulterate good and falsify truth.

    • Pervert good and falsify truth.

    • Pervert the goods and falsify the truths of faith and goodwill,

      • Thus to adulterate goods and falsify truths.

    • Pervert the goods and truths of the church.

    • Pervert goods and truths...

      • So that goods become evils and truths become falsities.

    • Falsify and pervert good and truth.

  • Truth and good: To commit adultery means to...

    • Pervert truth.

    • Falsify truths and adulterate goods.

      • In this way to go a whoring after strange gods.

    • Falsify and pervert the truths and goods of faith and goodwill.

    • Sacrifice/pervert truths and goods.

    • Pervert truths and goods by means of known facts.

      • Note: This is the same as committing whoredom with known facts.

    • Pervert the truths of faith and adulterate the goods of faith through reasoning based on known facts,

      • And being insatiable in this.

    • Multiply this kind of whoredom, perverting the truths of faith and adulterating the goods of faith even to the point of profaning the truth,

      • And being insatiable in this.

    • Pervert the truths and goods of the church even to the point of profanation.

    • Pervert the truth and good of the Word of God.

      • Note: Perversion of the truth and good of the Word happens when the Word is applied to confirm falsities and evils.

    • Accept falsity in place of truth and evil in place of good.

  • Falsity: To commit adultery means to...

    • Acknowledge falsities.

    • Be in falsities, that is, in truths that have been perverted.

    • Be in falsity from the perversion of truth.

      • “The wine of Babylon’s whoredom” in Scripture symbolically means falsity that results from the perversion of truth.

    • Parade falsity of doctrine as truth.

    • Be in falsity that is born of evil.

      • “The wine of Babylon’s whoredom” in Scripture symbolically means falsity that is born of evil.

    • Worship falsity.

  • Applying and explaining the Word: To commit adultery means to...

    • Confirm falsity and evil by wrong implementations of the Word of God.

    • Use the Word to confirm evils and falsities.

    • Use the doctrine of faith and goodwill to confirm evils and falsities.

    • Be led into errors through false reasoning and wrong interpretations of the Word.

      • This is what is meant by “being made drunk” with the wine of Babylon’s whoredom in Scripture.

    • Explain and pervert the truths of the Word...

      • From your own heart,

        • That is, from your own self,

      • In such a manner as the [self-centered] love of self and love of the world persuade you to do,

      • Consequently to speak lies, that is, falsities.

    • Listen to answers that come from the imaginary power of your own intellect.

    • Fashion appearances and likenesses of truth out of a knowledge of goodness and truth.

      • Commit whoredom with these appearances and likenesses.

      • [A scriptural verse that is referenced here speaks of the following:]

        • Taking the vessels of your adornment of My gold and silver which I had given you,

        • Making for yourself images of a male from them,

        • And committing whoredom with them.

      • Perverting (profaning) the truths of faith and adulterating the goods of faith...

        • Through reasoning by means of known facts.

      • Committing whoredom with reasoning…

        • Even to the profanation of truth.

      • Committing whoredom with known facts…

        • Even to the profanation of truth.

  • The self-centered loves of self and the world: To commit adultery means to...

    • Sacrifice to the [self-centered] love of self.

    • Burn incense to the [self-centered] love of the world

    • [Editorial note: Emanuel Swedenborg suggests that there is a good and healthy form of self-love, also a good and healthy form of love for the things of the world. He also suggests that if love for ourselves and love for the things of the world become more important to us than loving our neighbor and loving God/the Lord, these two forms of love tend to become selfish, self-centered, and hateful of others and the Lord. Most often, when Swedenborg talks about these two forms of love (which he refers to as “love of self” and “love of the world”) he is talking about the selfish forms of these loves. For purposes of this outline, then, the words “self-centered” are added, to make it clear that it is the selfish forms of these two loves that are being talked about, not the good and healthy forms. For a fuller explanation of this, see Sourcebook Section B, Assumption #4, There are four universal kinds (or levels) of love.]

    • Pervert the truths and goods of the church for the sake of [self-centered] rule (domination) and [self-centered] gain, even to the point of profanation.

    • [Editorial note: Emanuel Swedenborg suggests that the same thing that is said in the above editorial note about the love of self and love of the world, is also true of the love of governing, ruling, being in charge, or being in control, also the love of acquiring wealth, position, or status for the sake of being of use to others. These forms of love can be good and healthy, or they can be hateful, domineering, and unhealthy, depending on their point of focus.]

    • Be led into errors and ravings through falsities born of evil,

      • Specifically, the evil of [self-centered] rule and the evil of [self-centered] gain.

      • This is what “being made drunk with the wine of Babylon’s whoredom” means in Scripture.

  • Refusal to receive anything of faith and goodwill:

    • As soon as anyone commits adultery, and takes delight in doing so, he or she refuses to receive any longer from heaven anything of [genuine] faith and goodwill. 

      • [Editorial note: The words, “refuses any longer,” are understood to mean as long as the person continues to commit adultery and take delight in doing so.]

Words and phrases from Scripture: To commit adultery, in Scripture, means to...

  • Commit whoredom.

  • Pour out your whoredoms on everyone that passes by.

  • Take of your garments and make for yourself high places of various colors, and commit whoredom on them.

  • Take the vessels of your adornment of the Lord’s gold and silver, which He has given you, make for yourself images of a male, and commit whoredom with them.

  • Take your sons and daughters whom you have born to the Lord and sacrifice them.

  • Commit whoredom with the sons of Egypt your neighbors, great in flesh.

  • Multiply your whoredom to provoke the Lord.

  • Commit whoredom with the sons of Ashur,

    • And being insatiable in this.

  • Multiply your whoredom, even to the land of traffic, to Chaldea,

    • And being insatiable in this.

  • Take strangers.

  • Give hire to all your lovers, and recompense them, that they may come to you from every side for your whoredoms.

  • Be an adulterer/adulteress and a shedder of blood.

  • Delight yourself against the Lord.

  • Make the mouth wide and thrust out the tongue at the Lord.

  • Transgress.

  • Backslide.

  • Forget the Lord and trust in a lie.

  • Practice hypocrisy.

  • Commit adultery and walk in a lie.

    • Horrible stubbornness in doing these things

  • Strengthen the hands of the evil.

  • Speak a vision of the heart, not out of the mouth of Jehovah.

  • Commit debauchery with the wives of your companions.

  • Speak a word in the Lord’s name falsely, which He has not commanded.

Additional information:

  • On the origin of adulteries:

    • Adulteries correspond to the marriage of falsity and evil.

  • On the origin of the love of adultery:

    • The love of adultery comes from the marriage of falsity and evil, thus from hell, that is, from the devil.

Resource 2: The Apocalypse Explained

“Adultery” includes the following:

  • Making a man’s seed, in which there lies hidden the inmost of his life, and thus the rudiment of a new life, common with the inmosts and rudiments of others.

  • All whoredom that destroys married love, also the inclination to marry and preference of marriage, by turning people’s minds away from marriage to adultery:

    • Whoredom of a husband with the wife of another...

      • When done from loathing or aversion to marriage.

    • The delight of violating wives.

    • Whoredom of a husband with any woman, whether a widow, virgin, or harlot...

      • When done from loathing or aversion to marriage.

    • Whoredom of a wife with a married man or a single man…

      • When done from loathing or aversion to marriage.

    • Whoredoms of any unmarried man with the wife of another, or of any unmarried woman with the husband of another.

    • The delight associated with variety, even if it is with prostitutes or promiscuous women.

      • The delight associated with variety and changes of prostitutes or promiscuous women.

      • Note: This delight destroys the delight of marriage.

    • The delight of deflowering virgins without the goal of marriage.

      • Note: Those who are in this delight afterward desire marriage only for the sake of defloration, and when that is accomplished they loathe marriage.

    • The delight of debauching virgins.

      • [Note: To “debauch” means to destroy or debase the moral purity of; corrupt.]

    • Note: Fornication which springs from a certain instinct of nature toward marriage, which for various reasons cannot yet be entered into, does not destroy the inclination to marry, nor does it extinguish its love.

  • Believing adulteries to be allowable,

    • And perceiving them to be more delightful than marriages.

  • Taking delight in adulteries and no delight in marriages.

  • Confirming yourself in adulteries,

    • And committing them from favor and consent of your will.

  • Cherishing filthy thoughts about things that relate to marriage.

  • [Dwelling on] unchaste and filthy thoughts.

  • Thinking from any intention about an additional spouse or partner.

    • This turns heaven into hell.

    • If an angel merely thinks of such a thing he or she falls from heaven.

  • Hell and the rejection of all good and true things of the church.

    • These things are meant in the spiritual sense of the Word by adulteries and whoredoms.

    • Adultery is hell with a person.

    • Adultery is hell.

      • And consequently an abomination.

    • Adulteries are more or less infernal and loathsome.

    • Hell is called adultery.

  • Adulterating good and (consequently) falsifying truth.

    • Adulterations of good are in themselves evils.

    • Falsifications of truth are in themselves falsities.

    • “Adulteries and whoredoms” in Scripture refer to adulterations of good and falsifications of truth.

  • Separating truth from good.

    • Truth that is separated from good is not truth but falsity, when regarded interiorly.

  • Separating good from truth.

    • Good that is separated from truth is not good but evil, when regarded interiorly.

  • Separating faith from good works both in belief (“doctrine”) and life.

  • Believing that sins are set aside (or “remitted”) by the Holy Supper and not by active repentance (repentance of life).

  • Studying the Word only for the sake of glory.

  • Teaching falsely and living wickedly.

    • Priests who have done this have adulterated and falsified the Word.

      • Even though such priests may not be adulterers, adultery is incited/sparked off by them.

      • Such adultery is called sacerdotal adultery, which is distinguishable from other forms of adultery.

  • Living in the marriage of evil and falsity…

    • By thinking what is evil and false from a delight in these things,

    • And by doing what is evil and false from a love of them.

  • Being in evils from a love of ruling over others from mere delight in ruling and no delight in being of useful service.

  • Blaspheming in heart the holy things that are in the Word.

  • Altogether denying the Divine.

    • Denying God in heart.

Effects of adultery/the love of adultery: Adulterers...

  • Turn away from marriage.

  • Remove themselves from heaven...

    • To the extent that they love adultery.

  • Close (shut up) heaven and open hell to themselves...

    • To the degree that adulteries are believed to be allowable and perceived to be more delightful than marriages.

  • Does not receive the least inflow from heaven.

  • Have a hard heart.

  • Cease to believe anything of the church or of the Word of God.

    • Believe nothing of the Word, thus nothing of the church.

    • Make no account of divine truths and thus of the Word.

  • Are in no marriage from a spiritual origin, which is of good and truth, but only a marriage from an earthly origin.

  • Are in no union of minds, but only a union of bodies from a lascivious disposition or lust in the flesh.

    • Marriage with them is not spiritual but carnal.

  • Are in every form of evil love, if not in act yet in internal effort...

    • To the extent that they are in the love of adultery.

  • Are merely earthly.

    • Note: The lasciviousness of adultery makes one with naturalism.

  • Become entirely sensual people, and after death, evil spirits.

  • Become increasingly unhappy.

    • Note: Everything that is unpleasant and unhappy in marriages where the love of adultery reigns increase in direfulness even to the lowest hell.

  • Become forms of hell.

  • Become images of the devil.

  • Are desperately unmerciful, savage, and cruel.

Spiritual adultery defined and related to earthly adulteries and to the love of adultery:

  • Spiritual adultery is the love of evil and falsity.

    • The love of evil and falsity is the spiritual element within the physical love of adultery as a cause is in its effect.

  • Spiritual adultery is the joining together of evil and falsity.

  • Physical adultery exists by correspondence with the love and union of evil and falsity.

    • [Editorial note: In other words, physical adultery is a manifestation of the love and union of evil and falsity.]

  • Adulteries correspond to adulterations of good and consequent falsifications of truth.

    • Note: adulterations of good are in themselves evils, and falsifications of truth are in themselves falsities.

  • Adulteries correspond to defilements of good and truth.

The origin of adultery:

  • The marriage of evil and falsity

  • The love and consequent union of evil and falsity

The origin of any aura or atmosphere of adultery:

  • Any conjunction of evil and falsity in the spiritual world

The origin of the love of adultery:

  • The origin of the love of adultery is the marriage of evil and falsity, which in its essence is hell.

  • The love of evil and falsity

    • Note: The love of evil and falsity is the spiritual element within the physical love of adultery as a cause is in its effect.

    • The teachings of falsity and evil are the origin from which a desire and favor for adultery flow in from hell.

      • Note: Interiorly regarded, falsity is truth separated from good, and evil is good separated from truth.

The love of adultery defined:

  • The love of evil and falsity

  • The love of evil for falsity and of falsity for evil

  • The love of bearing [evil] fruit, namely, evil through falsity and falsity from evil

The love of adultery defined as to its actions:

  • The love of adultery in its actions is impurity itself and unchasteness itself.

    • Note: Unchasteness comes up from beneath.

The love of adultery described:

  • Deadly hatred is within it.

  • It is a fire enkindled from impurities that soon burns out and is turned into coldness, and also into aversion corresponding to hatred.

  • It is the foundation of all infernal/hellish loves.

    • Note: Infernal loves, in themselves, are not loves but hatreds.

  • It causes unhappiness.

    • Note: Everything that is unpleasant and unhappy in marriages where the love of adultery reigns increase in extreme dreadfulness even to the lowest hell.

The delights of the love of adultery—where they come from:

  • They come from the delight in doing harm (i.e., in doing evil).

The delight of adultery described and defined:

  • It is an infernal delight.

  • It counterfeits the delight of the love of what is good.

  • There is nothing but what is impure, unchaste, and lascivious within it.

  • In itself it is the delight of the love of evil.

  • In its essence it is the delight of hatred against good and truth.

  • It is the delight of hatred and thus the delight in doing evil.

  • This delight is with those who are in hell.

    • Doing evil is the joy of their heart.

      • They call it their heaven.

    • Their delight in doing evil derives its all from hatred and vindictiveness against good and truth.

    • When they are moved by a deadly and diabolical hatred, they rage against heaven, especially against those who are from heaven and who worship the Lord.

    • They violently burn to slaughter them.

    • They will to destroy their souls.

  • It is the delight of hatred, which, becoming a fire in the extremes and being injected into the lusting flesh, becomes for the moment the delight of adultery.

    • For that moment, the soul in which the hatred lies concealed withdraws itself.

  • For this reason adulterers are desperately unmerciful, savage, and cruel.

  • Note: This is the infernal marriage.

The nature of love between an adulterer and an adulteress:

  • There is no love between an adulterer and an adulteress except one that is similar to love born of hatred.

    • They can be together in externals but not internals.

      • Adultery is fiery in the externals but cold in internals.

    • The man feels impotence if the woman desires the act, and still more if she importunes it. 

      • Note: “Importune” means to request repeatedly, urge, insist upon, demand.

      • The internal, which is cold, then comes into effort and flows into what is fiery in the externals and extinguishes it, and so casts it off as unfit.

      • The lust of violating, which also enkindles that impure fire, then perishes.

  • The love of adultery is a fire enkindled from impurities that soon burns out and is turned into coldness, and also into aversion corresponding to hatred.

Things that come forth from adulteries and from the love of adultery:

  • Infernal and diabolical forms of love

  • Hatreds of every kind

    • From the love of adultery hatreds of every kind gush forth...

      • Against God.

      • Against the neighbor.

      • Against every good and truth of heaven and the church.

  • All evil and falsity

    • The love of adultery is the love of evil for falsity and of falsity for evil.

      • From this source a person has all evil.

    • The love of bearing [evil] fruit (namely, evil through falsity and falsity from evil) is born of a love for the marriage of evil and falsity.

  • Insanities and follies

  • Deceit and no peace

  • The very Asmodean demons, and the hells that people have who live in adulteries.

  • All infelicities

    •  [Note: “Infelicities” are things that are inappropriate. An archaic meaning of “infelicities” is forms of unhappiness.]

    • All infelicities belong to the love of adultery.

  • Foulnesses of every kind

  • Filth

    • Filth itself

  • Deformity, which is monstrous according to the quality of the adulterer

  • Extreme impotence (which is the final lot of those who are in adulteries) from which adulterers…

    • Become emptied of all the fire and light of life

    • Dwell alone in deserts as an image of the slothfulness and weariness of their own life

An adulterer’s justifications for adultery:

  • After people have closed heaven to themselves by loving adultery, they reason with themselves and/or others as follows, or in some similar way:

    • “Marriage and adulteries are alike, but marriages must be maintained in kingdoms for the sake of order and on account of the education of offspring.”

    • “Adulteries are not criminal, since offspring are born from them as well as from marriages.”

    • “Adulteries are not harmful to women, since they can endure them.”

    • “Adulteries are not harmful, since human reproduction is promoted by them.”

  • Note: Adulterers and adulteresses do not know that these and other, similar forms of reasoning—in favor of adulteries—ascend from the Stygian waters of hell, and that the lustful and bestial nature of humankind inherent in them from birth attracts such reasoning and sucks it in with delight, as a swine does excrement.

Resource 3: Principles of Life

Earthly (literal) meaning: In the literal sense to commit adultery, means to...

  • Commit whoredom.

  • Do obscene things.

  • Speak lascivious things.

  • Think about filthy things.

    • Look on the woman of another with intent to lust for her.

Spiritual meaning: In the spiritual sense to commit adultery means...

  • To adulterate the goods of the Word and falsify its truths...

    • By means of known facts.

    • By means of reasoning.

    • To the point of profaning good and truth.

Heavenly meaning: In the highest sense to commit adultery means to...

  • Deny the divinity of the Lord.

  • Claim for yourself the Lord’s divine sovereign power.

  • Profane the Word of God by adulterating and falsifying it.

Resource 4: True Christianity

Earthly (literal) meaning: In the literal sense to commit adultery means...

  • To commit adultery.

  • To will and do obscene things.

  • To think and say lascivious things.

  • To lust.

    • Looking on another [person’s spouse] with intent to lust for her or him

      • When lust enters the will it becomes, as it were, an action.

        • Allurement enters the understanding only, whereas intention enters the will.

        • When lust occupies the will it is an action.

        • An intention born of lust is an action.

      • [Editorial note: Another way to say this is that lusting for someone is an internal action—an action that occurs in the heart and mind, not yet in the body before the world.]

  • Licentious love.

  • Fornication.

  • Adultery in its kinds and degrees.

  • The lust to deflower.

  • The lust to rape.

  • The lust to seduce states of innocence.

  • Imputation of licentious love and of married love.

Spiritual meaning: In the spiritual sense to commit adultery means...

  • To adulterate the goods of the Word and falsify its truths.

  • To be unfaithful to the goods and truths of faith.

  • [Scriptural verses that are quoted here speak of...]

    • Horrible stubbornness in adulterating and walking in a lie.

    • Committing whoredom and speaking the Lord’s Word falsely.

    • Committing whoredom on account of leaving Jehovah.

    • Turning to those that have familiar spirits and to the wizards, to go a whoring after them.

    • Going a whoring after the gods of the inhabitants of the land.

    • Being given to drink of the wine of the anger of Babylon’s fornication.

    • Committing whoredom with “the great harlot.”

Heavenly meaning: In the heavenly sense to commit adultery means to...

  • Deny the holiness of the Word of God and to profane it.

    • The holiness of the Word is denied and profaned by those who ridicule in heart all the good and true things that belong to the church and religion.

Characteristics of an adulterer:

  • People who abstain from adulteries and whoredoms only on account of certain fears, or on account of any civil or moral law, and not at the same time on account of spiritual law, are nevertheless inwardly adulterers and fornicators. Such people...

    • Believe that adulteries and whoredoms are not sins.

    • Do not in spirit make them unlawful before God.

    • Commit them in spirit, even if they do not commit them in the body before the world.

    • Speak openly in favor of them in spirit.

Comparisons: Adulterers may be compared to...

  • Covenant-breakers who violate contracts.

  • The satyrs and priapi of the ancients who roamed in forests, crying out, “Where are there virgins, betrothed maidens, and wives to sport with?”

  • Rank he goats or dogs that run through the streets, looking around and smelling for female dogs to satiate their lasciviousness (i.e., to have sex with).

  • And so on….