1200. That 'Canaan' means external worship that has nothing internal within it has been shown already where Canaan was the subject. The type of external worship which is called 'Canaan' is similar to that of the Jews before the Lord's Coming, and after it as well. They had an external worship, which they also celebrated meticulously, yet they were unaware of what is internal, indeed so unaware of it as to imagine that they lived solely with a body. Of the soul, or faith, or the Lord, or spiritual and celestial life, or life after death, they were totally ignorant. Consequently very many in the Lord's time said that there was no resurrection, as is clear in Matthew 22:23-33; Mark 12:18-27; Luke 20:27-40. When a person is such that he does not believe he will live after death, he also does not believe in the existence of anything internal which is spiritual and celestial. This applies also to people whose lives are sunk in wholly evil desires because they lead merely bodily and worldly lives, especially those who are steeped in filthy avarice. They nevertheless have worship, some going to synagogue, or to church, and taking part in the services, some most meticulously. But because they do not believe in a life after death their worship is inevitably external worship having nothing internal within it, like a shell without a nut, and like a tree on which there is no fruit or even leaves. Such external worship is meant by 'Canaan'. All other types of external worship dealt with above were forms of worship that had internal things within them.

3432. 'And dug another well, and they did not dispute over that' means the literal sense of the Word. This is clear from the meaning of 'a well' as the Word, dealt with in 2702, 3096, 3424, here the Word as regards the literal sense. For the words 'he moved on from there and dug another well, and they did not dispute over that' mean that sense of the Word which is more external and which people do not refuse to recognize, namely that sense which is called the literal sense. The literal sense of the Word is threefold - historical, prophetical, and doctrinal. Each of these is such that it is intelligible even to those who see only external things.

[2] As regards the Word, this did not exist in most ancient times when the Church was celestial, for members of that Church had the Word inscribed on their hearts. Indeed the Lord taught them directly by way of heaven what good was and from this what truth was, and enabled them to perceive each of these from love and charity, and to know each of them from revelation. To them the very Word itself was the Lord. This Church was succeeded by another which was not celestial but spiritual. At first this Church did not have a Word other than that which had been acquired from the most ancient people, a Word which was representative of the Lord and served spiritually to mean His kingdom. Thus to them the internal sense was the Word itself. The fact that they also had a written Word, both historical and prophetical, which is no longer extant, and that this in a similar way had an internal sense within it which was concerned with the Lord, see 2686. Consequently the wisdom of those times consisted in both speaking and in writing by means of representatives and meaningful signs - inside the Church about Divine things, and outside the Church about other matters, as is evident from the writings of these ancients which we possess. But in the course of time that wisdom perished, so that at length people were not aware that any internal sense existed even in the books of the Word. That was what the Jewish and Israelitish nation were like. They regarded the prophetical part of the Word to be holy because it sounded ancient and they heard the name of Jehovah when the sense of the letter was read, but at the same time they did not believe that anything deeper and Divine lay concealed in it. Nor does the Christian world think that the Word has any deeper holiness.

[3] From this it becomes clear how as time went by wisdom shifted from things that were the most internal to those that were the most external, and how mankind removed itself from heaven and at length sank as low as the dust of the ground in which wisdom is now seen to reside. Since this is what happened to the Word, that is to say, its internal sense has gradually been effaced, so that at the present day its existence is not known, and yet that sense is the very Word itself in which the Divine is most nearly present, this chapter therefore describes its consecutive states.