3057. 'At the time that women go out to draw water' means a state of instruction. This is clear from the meaning of 'time' as state, dealt with immediately above in 3056, and from the meaning of 'a woman who draws' or a drawer of water, as receiving instruction, dealt with below. What has been stated so far from 3054 onwards presents the meaning in the internal sense of the details related in this verse as a historical event. What those details embody in a single sentence however is not readily apparent to anyone who has not been taught anything about the natural man, or about the facts and matters of doctrine belonging there, or indeed about the way in which truths are raised up from the natural man into the rational and become rational. They are even less apparent to him if he does not know the nature of the rational when compared with the natural, that is, the nature of the concepts present in the rational when compared with the images in the natural.

[2] Those concepts in the rational do not come immediately into a person's view while he is living in the body. For it is the things in the natural which enter his awareness, rarely those in the rational except when a certain kind of light falls on those images in the natural, as when some mental power enters into and arranges into order the contents of a person's thought, or as when one gains an insight into the matter on which the mind is dwelling. Unless these and many other considerations are known, scarcely any intelligible explanation of what occurs in this verse is at all possible; such as that a holy ordering of general facts is meant, and also a removal from matters of doctrine so as to receive the truths of faith, and that this ordering and this removal occur during a state of obscurity, and that a state such as this is one of instruction.

[3] Nevertheless let a brief description be given, insofar as the matter can be understood, of what goes on in a person when he is being reformed by the Lord, for man's reformation is to some extent an image of what happened to the Lord when He was in the world, as stated above in 3043. While a person is being reformed the things that are general within his natural man are being ordered by the Lord so that they correspond to things that are in heaven. What correspondence is, and the fact that it is a relationship between spiritual things and natural, see 2987, 2989-2991, 3002. The things which are general are first of all ordered in such a way that those which are particular can be gradually introduced into them by the Lord, and then those that are specific into these. For unless the general are ordered, no order can come to the particular, because the latter enter into and confirm the former. Still less can order come to the specific, for these enter into the particular (which act as general things for them) and give light to the particular. This is what is meant by a holy ordering of general facts, and what is meant in the internal sense by making the camels kneel down. In this way they submit themselves to receive influx.

[4] While these things are being ordered in this manner matters of doctrine are removed since they are conclusions drawn from facts. For so to speak a dictate flows in by way of the rational, declaring that one thing is true, another not true - true because it agrees with general things when ordered, or not true because it disagrees. No other type of influx as to truths exists. Matters of doctrine are indeed present already, yet they are not really matters of doctrine until they are believed, but merely facts. When they are thought about therefore, any conclusion that is drawn is not from them but from other things concerning them. This is what is meant by being removed from matters of doctrine, and what is meant in the internal sense here by 'outside the city'. But this state is what is called an obscure state and is meant by 'evening time'; but once matters of doctrine have been confirmed so that they are believed morning, or a state of light arrives. All else in this verse is evident from what has now been stated.

917. 'According to their families' means pairs. This is clear from what has been stated already in Chapter 7:2, 3, 15, about them going into the ark 'seven by seven of the clean, and two by two of the unclean', whereas in the present verse it is said that they went out 'according to families'. The reason no reference is made to seven by seven of the clean and two by two of the unclean but to 'families' is that the Lord has now brought all things into such order that they represent families. With a regenerate person goods and truths, that is, the things of charity and those of faith deriving from it, interrelate like blood relatives and relatives through marriage, and so they are like families descended from a single stock or parent, in the way they are in heaven, 685. This is the order which the Lord brings to goods and truths. The express meaning in the present verse is that every single good looks upon its own truth as one joined to it in marriage. And just as in general charity looks to faith, so in every individual part good looks to truth. For unless the general whole is the product of the individual part there is no general whole. It is from the individual parts that the general comes into being, and it is by virtue of that that it is called the general. With every person the situation is as follows: As is the person in general so are the most individual details of his affections and ideas. These are what he is composed of or what make him what he is in general. People therefore who have been regenerated become in the most individual details of their person what they are in general character.