6500. 'And wept on him' means sorrow. This is clear without explanation. The sorrow meant in the internal sense here by 'weeping' is not because of death, as the external sense implies, but sorrow because the good of the spiritual Church is not able to be raised above the natural. For the Lord, who is flowing in constantly by way of the internal, wishes to make that good more perfect and draw it closer to Himself; but in spite of this that good cannot be raised to the prime degree of good, which is that of the celestial Church, 3833. This is because the member of sorrow the spiritual Church dwells in obscurity, compared with one who belongs to the celestial Church. He engages in reasoning about truths to establish whether they are truths; or he goes about substantiating what is called doctrine, an activity he engages in without any perception of whether what he substantiates is true or not. And once he has substantiated something for himself he fully believes it to be true, even though it may be false. For nothing is incapable of being substantiated, since that kind of activity is the work of cleverness, not of intelligence, let alone wisdom. Falsity can be substantiated more readily than truth, because it encourages evil desires and accords with the illusions of the senses. Since the member of the spiritual Church is like this he cannot possibly be raised above the natural. This then is the reason for the sorrow meant by 'Joseph wept on him'.

6036. 'Now let me die' means new life. This is clear from the meaning of 'dying' as resurrection into life, thus new life, dealt with in 3326, 3498, 3505, 4618, 4621, 6008. The reason why 'dying' means a new phase of life has also been shown in those paragraphs, and it is this: Because a person instantly begins a new phase of his life when he dies, he is awakened into life as soon as he has cast aside the material body which had served him for use in the world. New life is meant here by 'dying' because that life comes through an inflowing from the internal, an inflowing that is meant by Joseph's going up to meet his father, 6030, and through the joining together meant by Joseph's falling on Israel's neck, 6033.