4923. 'Saying, This one came out first' means that it had priority of place. This is clear from the meaning of 'coming out first', or being the firstborn, as priority of place and a higher position, dealt with in 3325. Dealt with here and in the remainder of this chapter is the birthright. Anyone unacquainted with the internal sense of the Word may suppose that merely the birthright, and consequently the privileges which the firstborn might lawfully acquire, are dealt with. But one who does have some knowledge of the internal sense may see plainly enough that something of higher significance also lies concealed in this description. He may see this not only from the actual fact that one of the infants put out a hand and then drew it back, at which point the other infant came out, but also from the fact that they received their names from this, and from the fact that the midwife bound a twice-dyed thread on the hand of him who was first. Other descriptions may also lead him to see the same, such as the incident very like the present one when, after Esau and Jacob had struggled together in the womb, Esau came out first with Jacob grasping his - Esau's - heel, Genesis 25:23-24, 26. In addition to this there is the incident involving the two sons of Joseph; when blessing them Jacob placed his right hand on the younger and his left on the older, Genesis 48:17-19.

[2] The Jews and also some Christians do, it is true, believe that these, along with all other descriptions in the Word, contain some hidden meaning which they call mystical, the reason for that belief being the holiness, so far as the Word is concerned, which has been impressed on them since early childhood. But when asked what that mystical meaning may be, they do not know. One may tell them that because the Word is Divine the mystical meaning within it must of necessity be the kind of meaning the angels in heaven understand, and that the Word cannot have any other mystical content, or if it does, that content would be either mythical, magical, or idolatrous. One may in addition tell them that this mystical meaning understood by the angels in heaven is nothing else than what is called spiritual and celestial, the sole subject of which is the Lord, His kingdom and the Church, and consequently good and truth, and that if they knew what good and truth were, or what love and faith were, they would also be acquainted with that mystical sense. Yet scarcely any Jew or Christian believes any of this when told it. Indeed members of the Church are so lacking in knowledge at the present day that any mention of that which is celestial and spiritual is barely intelligible to them. But even so, because in the Lord's Divine mercy I have been allowed to be simultaneously in heaven as a spirit and on earth as a man, and consequently to talk to angels, doing so now without a break for many years, what else can I do but disclose those things which are called the mystical contents of the Word, that is, its interiors, which are the spiritual and celestial things of the Lord's kingdom? What the details recorded here hold within them in the internal sense - the details regarding Tamar's two sons - will be stated in what follows below.