2332. 'Wash your feet' means accommodation to his natural. This is clear from what has been stated in the previous chapter, in 2162, where the same words occur. In former times when people saw the angel of Jehovah they believed that they were about to die, Exodus 19:12, 21, 24; 20:19, Judges 6:22, 23, Judges 13:22, 23. The reason they did so is that Divine Holiness flowing into the unholiness present with man is so powerful that it seems like a devouring and consuming fire. Consequently when the Lord manifests Himself visibly to man, and even to angels, He in miraculous ways adjusts and moderates the Holy proceeding from Himself so that they can stand it. Or what amounts to the same, He adapts Himself to their natural. This then is the meaning in the internal sense of these words which Lot addressed to the angels, 'Wash your feet'. This shows the nature of the internal sense, for it cannot be seen from the sense of the letter that this is the meaning.

1385. There are spirits who belong to the province of the skin, especially its scaly area, who wish to reason about everything, but who have no perception of what good or truth is. Indeed, the more they go on reasoning the less they perceive. They identify reasoning with wisdom; and they do this so that they may appear wise. They have been told that angelic wisdom involves perceiving whether a thing is good or true without reasoning about it, but they have no conception of the possibility of a perception such as this. They are people who during their lifetime had thrown truth and good into confusion by means of scientific and philosophical arguments, and in so doing had seemed to themselves to be more learned than everybody else; but they had not in the first place grasped from the Word any basic ideas of truth, as a result of which they possess less common sense than anybody else