5253. 'And there is no one who can interpret it' means ignorance about what it held within it. This is clear from the meaning of 'interpreting' as what something held within it, dealt with in 5093, 5105, 5107, 5141 - ignorance about what it held within it therefore being meant by 'no one who can interpret it'. In the internal sense 'no one' does not mean no one or nobody, but simply absence or non-existence. Here therefore that which is 'not' is meant, thus something that is unknown to people or of which they are ignorant. The explanation for this is that one does not see in the internal sense any particular person, or indeed anything that has to do specifically with any person, see 5225; and by the expression 'no one' or nobody' no more than some general aspect of a person is implied.

[2] There are in general three elements which depart from the literal sense of the Word when it becomes the internal sense; these are the temporal, the spatial, and the personal. The reason for this is that neither time nor space exists in the spiritual world. These two elements belong properly to the natural order, which also accounts for its being said that those who die depart from the realm of time, leaving temporal concerns behind them. And the reason why in the spiritual world they do not see anything that has to do specifically with some person is that any focusing, when they speak, on some particular person narrows down and limits the idea they have in mind; such a focusing prevents any broadening or removal of limits to their idea. Their use, when they speak, of broadened and unlimited ideas renders their language universal, a language that includes and enables them to express countless and also wondrous ideas. This is what the language used by angels is like, especially that used by celestial angels, which, compared with that employed by others, knows no limitations. This being so, the whole of their speech reaches into what is infinite and into what is eternal, consequently into the Divine of the Lord.

5141. 'That he had interpreted what was good' means what was going to take place. This is clear from the meaning of 'interpreting' as what it held within itself, or what lay within it, dealt with above in 5093, 5105, 5107, 5121, and thus also what was going to take place. The discernment that what was good was going to take place was a sensory discernment which, compared with other kinds of discernment, is an obscure one. To be exact, there is the power of discernment exercised by the senses or the exterior natural; the power of discernment exercised by the interior natural; and the power of discernment exercised by the rational. When a person is led by affection to think on a more interior level and to divorce his mind from what his senses and his body tell him, his discernment is of the rational kind. For in his case lower ideas, that is, those conceived by his external man, become dormant, and that person is virtually in his spirit. But when, for reasons that arise in the world, his thought exists on a more exterior level his power of discernment is that exercised by the interior natural. The rational is, it is true, exerting an influence, but not with any living affection. When however a person is engrossed in mere pleasures and the delights engendered by a love of the world, and also by self-love, his power of discernment is that exercised by the senses. His life in this case is focused on external interests or the body, and he has no room for anything internal apart from what will prevent him from breaking out into shameful and unseemly kinds of behaviour. But the more external his discernment is, the more obscure it is; for in relation to interior things exterior ones are general. Countless details that are interior manifest themselves in that which is exterior as one simple whole.