In the Bible, Egypt represents knowledge and the love of knowledge. In a good sense that means knowledge of truth from the Lord through the Bible, but in a natural sense it simply means earthly knowledge to be stored up and possessed. And even knowledge from the Bible is not always good: If we learn them with the goal of making them useful, then they are filled with angelic ideas. But they lack purpose when they are learned only for the sake of knowing things or for the reputation of being learned. So Egypt is a place you go to learn things, but to become heavenly you have to escape the sterile "knowing" and journey to the land of Canaan, where the knowledge is filled with the internal desire for good. It's interesting that when Egypt was ruled by Joseph, it was a haven for his father and brothers. This shows that when a person's internal mind rules in the land of learning, they can learn much that is useful. But eventually a pharaoh arose that didn't know Joseph, and the Children of Israel were enslaved. The pharaoh represents the external mind; when it is in charge the excitement and self-congratulation of knowing can reduce the internal mind to a type of slavery. The mind - like the Children of Israel - ends up making bricks, or man-made falsities from external appearances.

War in the Word represents the combat of temptation when good loves are assaulted by evil loves or false ideas. The evil that attacks comes from one of the many societies of hell, and it operates by arousing a selfish love in our mind that is contrary to what we know is right. Then our selfish love attacks the love that nourishes the wish to be a good person, and there is war in our minds. This is represented by wars that the children of Israel fought in and around the land of Canaan, of which there is a long history in the old testament. The selfish loves abound in our minds from our heredity, and the good loves come along with our conscience as it develops. If we had no conscience we couldn't be tempted; we would immediately follow the wishes of our selfishness and give in. But then the end result is that we are in slavery to the hells and will do whatever they want.

(Odkazy: Arcana Coelestia 1659 [3], 1664, 1683, 1788 [2])