This can, of course, be a wonderful thing: It is essential for our journey to heaven, and is the reason for the holiness of marriage. But when the men represent falsity it can also be horrendously twisted, as in the attempted homosexual rape in Sodom (Genesis 19) and the rape of the concubine in Gibeah (Judges 19). In a general sense, men represent things of the intellect -- facts, ideas, knowledge, everything from the deepest truths to the most pernicious falsities about life and the Lord. Women in general represents things of affection -- desire, passion, caring, everything from the most exalted love for the Lord to the darkest hatred. When a man “knows” a woman in the Bible, then, it represents a joining together of those intellectual and affectionate faculties. “Know" is also often used in connection with virginity. A women who has “not known a man” represents the affection for truth, unsullied by falsity.

265. 'Husband' (vir) means the rational. This is clear from verse 6 of this chapter which says that the woman gave to her husband (vir) with her and he ate, meaning that he conceded. It is also clear from what was shown concerning the word 'man' (vir) in 158, where that word was used to mean a person who is wise and intelligent. Here however, because wisdom and intelligence had perished as a result of eating from the tree of knowledge, it means the rational, for nothing else was left. Indeed the rational is an imitation or seeming likeness of intelligence.