160. Verse 24 Therefore a man (vir) will leave his father and his mother and will cling to his wife, and they will be one flesh.

'Leaving father and mother' is leaving the internal man, for the internal is that which conceives and gives birth to the external. 'Clinging to his wife' is in order that the internal man may be within the external. 'Being one flesh' means that they are there together. Previously the internal man, and the external man deriving from the internal, were spirit, but now they have become flesh. In this way celestial and spiritual life was joined on to the proprium in order that they might seemingly be one.

The number "four" in the Bible represents things being linked together or joined. This is partly because four is two times two, and two represents the ultimate linking between our desire to be good and our understanding of truth. We can also see this in the fact that most buildings are rectangular, with the four sides linking together to make a whole. We also divide directions into four -- north, east, south and west -- and talk about the "four corners" of something meaning all of it. So our special thinking naturally looks at four sides as linking together into a whole.

(Odkazy: Apocalypse Explained 417; Arcana Coelestia 1686, 9103, 9601, 9767, 9864)