6729. 'And the daughter of Pharaoh went down' means the kind of religion practised there. This is clear from the meaning of 'the daughter' as an affection for truth and good, and from this as the Church, dealt with in 2362, 3963, and in the contrary sense as an affection for falsity and evil, and from this as the kind of religion that springs from them, 3024. Here the kind of religion that springs from false factual knowledge is meant because the daughter is Pharaoh's; for 'Pharaoh' here represents false factual knowledge, 6651, 6679, 6683, 6692. In the Word Churches are meant by 'daughters', as may be recognized from the very many places in which the Church is called the daughter of Zion, and the daughter of Jerusalem. The false religions of quite a number of nations are also meant by 'daughters', as is evident from the places where those religions are called daughters, for example, the daughter of Tyre, Psalms 45:12; the daughter of Edom, Lamentations 4:22; the daughter of the Chaldeans and of Babel, Isaiah 47:1, 5; Jeremiah 50:41-42; Jeremiah 51:33; Zechariah 2:7, Psalms 137:8; the daughter of the Philistines, Ezekiel 16:27, 57; the daughter of Tarshish, Isaiah 23:10. 'The daughter of Egypt' is spoken of in Jeremiah,

Go up to Gilead and take balm, O virgin daughter of Egypt! Make for yourself vessels of migration, O inhabitant daughter of Egypt! The daughter of Egypt has been put to shame; she has been delivered into the hand of the people from the north. Jeremiah 46:11, 19, 24.

'The daughter of Egypt' stands for an affection for reasoning that relies, since a negative attitude of mind reigns, on factual knowledge - reasoning whether the truths of faith are indeed true. Thus she stands for the kind of religion which springs from that reasoning, a religion in which there is no belief in anything except what is false.

6681. 'And the king of Egypt called the midwives' means that those under the influence of falsities planned a course of action against those who had true factual knowledge in the natural. This is clear from the meaning of 'calling' here as planning a course of action, for the purpose of the calling was the destruction of truths, but the planned course of action was made to fail because the truths were kept safe by the Divine, meant by 'the midwives feared God', 6678 (the evil in the next life who molest the good likewise plot with one another, as I have been allowed to know from experience); from the meaning of 'the king of Egypt' as those under the influence of falsities, dealt with just above in 6679; and from the meaning of 'the midwives as the natural where true factual knowledge resides, dealt with in 4588, 6673, 6675, 6678. From all this it is evident that 'the king of Egypt called the midwives' means that those under the influence of falsities planned a course of action against those who had true factual knowledge in the natural.