5302. 'And the land will not be cut off in the famine' means lest the person perishes - through an absence of truth. This is clear from the meaning of 'being cut off' as perishing, and from the meaning of 'the land', in this case the land of Egypt, as the natural mind, dealt with immediately above in 5301; and because it is the natural mind, it is the person's true self, since a human being is a human being by virtue of his mind, it being the actual mind itself that constitutes a person, and the kind of mind he has that determines what kind of a person he is. By the mind is meant a person's understanding and will, consequently his essential life. People who are stupid imagine that a human being is a human being by virtue of his outward appearance, that is to say, because he possesses a human face. Others who are a little less stupid say that the human being is a human being because he has the ability to speak, while others again who are less stupid still say that the human being is a human being because he has the ability to think. But a human being is not a human being for any of these reasons but because he has the capacity to think what is true and to will what is good; and when he thinks what is true and wills what is good he has the capacity to behold what is Divine and, perceiving what it is, to accept it.

[2] This is what distinguishes a human being from animals. Not merely his human appearance, or his ability to speak, or his ability to think make him a human being; for if he thinks what is false and wills what is evil, that makes him not only like but worse than an animal. For he then uses those abilities to destroy what is human within himself and to make a wild animal of himself. This is particularly evident from people of this kind in the next life, for when they are seen in the light of heaven, and also when angels see them, they look at that moment like monsters, and some of them like wild animals. The deceitful look like snakes, and others like something different again. But when they are taken away from the light of heaven and are returned to their own inferior light which they have in hell, they look to one another like human beings. But the implications of all this - of the fact that a person will perish in times when truth is absent if he has no forms of good and truth stored away by the Lord in the interior parts of his mind, meant by 'food kept as a reserve for the land, for the seven years of famine, so that the land is not cut off in the famine' - will be stated in the sections that follow next in the present chapter.

5288. 'And set him over the land of Egypt' means which will set in order all that is in the natural mind. This is clear from the meaning of 'setting over something' as appointing one who will set in order, thus as setting in order; and from the meaning of 'the land of Egypt' as the natural mind, as above in 5276, 5278, 5279. The pronoun 'him' used here refers to a man with intelligence and wisdom, by whom truth and good are meant. From this it is evident that the words used here mean that truth and good will set in order all that exists in the natural it is indeed good and truth which set every single thing in order in the natural mind, for when good and truth flow in, they do so from within and in that way place every single thing in its proper position.

[2] The person who does not know about the nature of the human power of thought, or who does not know about the human ability to look at things, see what they are, analyse them, form conclusions regarding them, and finally transmit them to the will and through the will into action, will see nothing wondrous in any of this. Such a person imagines that all this happens naturally he is totally unaware of the fact that every single thought flows in from the Lord by way of heaven, and that but for that inflow from the Lord a person cannot have any thought at all, and also that as that inflow is diminished, so is his thought. Nor therefore does that person know that good flowing in from the Lord by way of heaven sets all things in order, shaping them into an image of heaven, so far as the person allows this to happen. Nor consequently does he know that such inflowing thought possesses the heavenly form. The heavenly form is the form in which the communities of heaven exist set in their proper order, a form that accords with the one which good and truth going forth from the Lord produce.