7555. Verses 19-21 And now send, assemble your livestock and all that you have in the field; every man and beast that will be found in the field and will not be gathered home, ¹ the hail will come down on them and they will die. And he that feared the word of Jehovah among the servants of Pharaoh caused his servants and his livestock to flee to the houses. And he that did not take the word of Jehovah to heart left his servants and his livestock in the field.

'And now send, assemble your livestock' means that the truth of good should be gathered. 'And all that you have in the field' means what belongs to the Church. 'Every man and beast' means interior and exterior good. 'That is found in the field' means which belongs to the Church. 'And will not be gathered home' means which is not in safe keeping. 'The hail will come down on them and they will die' means that it will be completely destroyed by falsity. 'And he that feared the word of Jehovah among the servants of Pharaoh' means those things in the natural mind which were the Lord's. 'Caused his servants and his livestock to flee to the houses' means that they were stored away and placed in safe keeping interiorly. 'And he that did not take the word of Jehovah to heart' means the things which were not from the Lord. 'Left his servants and his livestock in the field' means that they were not stored away and placed in safekeeping.

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560. THE INTERNAL SENSE

Before one can go any further, reference must be made to the Church as it was before the Flood. In general it went the same way as subsequent Churches, as the Jewish Church before the Lord's Coming and the Christian Church after; that is, people corrupted and adulterated the cognitions of true faith. In particular as regards the member of the Church before the Flood, he conceived dreadful persuasions in the process of time and immersed the goods and truths of faith in filthy desires, to such an extent that scarcely any remnants resided with him. And once they had become such those people suffocated themselves so to speak, for nobody can live without remnants. Indeed, as already stated, it is remnants that make man's life superior to that of animals; it is from remnants, or from the Lord through them, that anyone is enabled to be a human being, to know what good and truth are, and to reflect on individual things, and so to think and to reason. For remnants alone are what contain spiritual and celestial life.