10282. 'Throughout your generations' means within all things of the Church. This is clear from the meaning of 'generations' - when the subject is the children of Israel, by whom the Church is meant - as those who belong to the Church, dealt with in 10212, and so in the abstract sense, without reference to persons, as things of the Church. This is called the abstract sense, without reference to persons, because things that are Divine and emanate from the Lord constitute the Church, not anything that is a person's own. Those things do indeed flow into and reside with the person; nevertheless they do not become the person's own, only the Lord's residing with that person. This being so, when angels talk to one another they speak of things without reference to actual persons. Neither therefore does the name of some person mentioned in the Word pass into heaven, but the reality that is meant by that person.

All names of persons and places mentioned in the Word serve to mean spiritual realities, see 1888, 4442, 5095, 5225.

Names do not pass into heaven, 1876, 6516, 10216.

5095. 'To the king of Egypt' means which were subordinate to the interior natural. This is clear from the representation of Pharaoh or 'the king of Egypt' in this chapter as a new state of the natural man, dealt with in 5079, 5080, consequently as the interior natural since this had been made new. As to what the interior natural is, and the exterior natural, see immediately above in 5094. The nature of the internal sense of the Word in the historical sections and in the prophetical parts must be stated briefly. When the historical sense mentions a number of persons - as when Joseph, Pharaoh, the chief of the attendants, the cupbearer, and the baker are mentioned here - various things are indeed meant by them in the internal sense, yet only as all these exist in one person. The reason for this is that names mean different spiritual things, as they do here: 'Joseph' represents the Lord as regards the celestial-spiritual from the rational and also within the natural, 'Pharaoh' represents Him as regards the new state of the natural man, that is, as regards the interior natural, 'the cupbearer and the baker' as regards the things that belong to the external natural. Such is the nature of the internal sense. The same is so in other places, for example when Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are mentioned; in the sense of the letter they are three different persons, but in the highest sense all three represent the Lord - 'Abraham' the Divine itself, 'Isaac' His Divine Intellectual, ¹ and 'Jacob' His Divine Natural. The same may be seen in the Prophets where sometimes the text consists of mere names, either of persons or of kingdoms or of cities; yet all of them together present and describe a single entity in the internal sense. Anyone unaware of this may be easily misled by the sense of the letter into visualizing a variety of things, with the result that the idea of a single entity disappears.

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