5402. 'That there was corn in Egypt' means the intention to acquire truths to itself through factual knowledge, which is 'Egypt'. This is clear from the meaning of 'corn' as the truths known to the Church, or the truths of faith - 'an abundance of corn' being a multiplication of truth, see 5276, 5280, 5292; and from the meaning of 'Egypt' as factual knowledge, dealt with in 1164, 1165, 1186, 1462, and, in the genuine sense, facts known to the Church, see 4749, 4964, 4966. As is evident from the words that come immediately after them, the ones used here imply an intention to acquire these truths to itself. The expression 'facts known to the Church', which 'Egypt' stands for here, is used to mean all the cognitions of truth and good before they become linked to the interior man, that is, through the interior man to heaven, and thus through heaven to the Lord. The teachings of the Church and its religious observances, in addition to its cognitions about why and how these represent spiritual realities and the like, all exist as nothing more than known facts until a person sees from the Word whether they are truths, and having done so makes them his own.

[2] There are two ways of acquiring the truths of faith, one way being through religious teaching, the other through the Word. When religious teaching alone is the way by which a person acquires them, he pins his faith on those who have deduced such truths from the Word, and assures himself that they are indeed truths because others have said that they are. Thus he does not believe those truths on account of any faith of his own but on account of that possessed by others. When however he gathers those truths for himself from the Word and assures himself for that reason that they are truths, he believes them on account of their Divine origin and so on account of a faith received from the Divine. Initially everyone within the Church acquires the truths that constitute faith from religious teaching; indeed this is how he ought to acquire them because he is not as yet equipped with judgement of his own that will enable him to see those truths from the Word. At this time those truths are for him no different from factual knowledge. But once he does possess the judgement to see them on his own, and if he does not consult the Word to the end that he may see from there whether they are indeed truths, they remain with him as factual knowledge. If however he does consult the Word with an affection for and an intention to know truths, and having found them there acquires them from their own true source, he receives the truths of faith from the Divine and makes them his own. These and other matters like them are what the internal sense is dealing with here; for 'Egypt' is that factual knowledge, while 'Joseph' is truth received from the Divine and so truth obtained from the Word.

1815. 'He said to him, I am Jehovah' means the Lord's Internal Man which is Jehovah, from whom perception came. This is clear from what has been stated in various places already, to the effect that the Lord's Internal, that is, whatever the Lord received from the Father, was in Him Jehovah - for He was conceived from Jehovah. That which a person receives from the, father is one thing, while that from the mother is another. From the father a person receives everything that is internal, the soul itself or life being from the father; but from the mother he receives everything that is external. In short, the interior man or spirit itself comes from the father, but the exterior man or body itself from the mother. This anyone may grasp merely from the consideration that the soul itself is inseminated by the father, and starts to clothe itself in the ovum with a tiny body. All else that is subsequently added to it, both in the ovum and in the womb, comes from the mother, for it receives nothing contributing to its growth from anywhere else.

[2] From this it becomes clear that internally the Lord was Jehovah. Since however the external which the Lord received from the mother was to be united to the Divine, or Jehovah - and this, as has been stated, was accomplished by means of temptations and victories - it inevitably appeared to Him that when He spoke to Jehovah, it was as if to another. But in fact He spoke to Himself, that is to say, insofar as He had become joined to Jehovah. The perception which the Lord possessed - being most perfect, far superior to that of every other who has ever been born - sprang from His Internal Man, that is, from Jehovah Himself; and this is meant here in the internal sense by 'Jehovah said to him'.