In general, men are driven by intellect and women by affections, and because of this men in the Bible generally represent knowledge and truth and women generally represent love and the desire for good. This generally carries over into marriage, where the man's growing knowledge and understanding and the woman's desire to be good and useful are a powerful combination. In many cases in the Bible, then, "husband" refers to things of truth and understanding, much as "man" does. Magnificent things can happen in a true marriage, though, when both partners are looking to the Lord. If a husband opens his heart to his wife, it's as though she can implant her loves inside him, transforming his intellectual urges into a love of growing wise. She in turn can grow in her love of that blooming wisdom, and use it for joy in their married life and in their caring for children and others in their life. Many couples, even in heaven, stay in that state -- called "Spiritual" -- growing deeper and deeper to eternity. There is the potential, though, for the couple to be transformed: through the nurturing love of his wife the husband can pass from a love of growing wise to an actual love of wisdom itself, and the wife can be transformed from the love of her husband's wisdom into the wisdom of that love -- the actual expression of the love of the Lord they have built together. In that state -- called "Celestial" -- the husband represents love and the desire for good, and the wife represents truth and knowledge.

7999. 'A purchase paid for with silver' means who is in possession of some spiritual truth. This is clear from the meaning of 'a purchase' as that which is acquired and made one's own, dealt with in 4397, 4487, 5374, 5397, 5406, 5410, 5426; and from the meaning of 'silver' as truth, dealt with in 1551, 2954, 5658, at this point spiritual truth since a slave who was bought means in the internal sense the natural man, and the master who bought him therefore means the spiritual man. No one can know what this really implies unless he knows in what way the spiritual buys the natural for itself, that is, acquires and makes it its own. When a person is being regenerated his internal and external, that is, his spiritual and natural, are at variance with each other at first; for his spiritual desires the things of heaven, whereas his natural desires those of the world. But at this time the spiritual is constantly entering the natural and bringing it into agreement. This is done by means of truth; and what the spiritual brings into agreement with itself within the natural is said to be 'bought with silver', that is, acquired and made its own by means of truth.