A "field" in the Bible usually represents the Lord's church, and more specifically the desire for good within the church. It's where good things start, take root, and grow. When you have a desire to be a good person and to do good things, the natural first questions are "What does that mean?", "What should I do?", "What can I do?". You look for ideas, concepts, direction. Once you figure out something you want to do or a change you want to make in yourself, you seek specific knowledge. If you want to volunteer at a food pantry, say, you'd need to know whom to call, when they need help, where to go, what to bring. Armed with that knowhow, you're ready to get to work. That process could be compared to food production. You start with a field -- which is that desire to be good. Then you plant seeds -- those ideas and concepts. Those seeds sprout into plants -- the specific facts and knowledge needed for the task (easily seen in the food pantry example, but also true with deeper tasks like "being more tolerant of my co-workers" or "taking more time for prayer," or "consciously being a more loving spouse"). Finally, those plants produce food -- the actual good thing that you go and do. The Writings also say that in a number of cases a "field" represents the doctrine, or teachings, of the church. This sounds markedly different. The desire for good is emotional, a drive, a wanting; doctrine is a set of ideas. But for a church to be true, its doctrine must be centered on a desire for good, and must lead people toward doing what is good. So sound doctrine is actually closely bound up with the desire for good.

793. From this point onwards to the end of the present chapter the subject is the people before the Flood who perished. This becomes clear from the details in the description given. People who possess the internal sense can recognize instantly, and indeed from any single word, what the subject is, better still from the combination of many. When the subject changes different words instantly appear, or else the same words combined differently. The reason is that some words are peculiar to spiritual matters, others peculiar to celestial; or what amounts to the same, some are peculiar to things of the understanding, others to those of the will. For example, 'desolation' is a word used of spiritual things, 'vastation' of celestial; 'city' is used of spiritual, 'mountain' of celestial; and so on. The same applies to combinations of words. And what is bound to amaze everybody, the difference in Hebrew is frequently just a matter of vocalization. In what belongs to the class of spiritual words the first three vowels [of the alphabet] are normally prominent, but in the case of what is celestial the last two. The fact that these verses contain a different subject is also discernible from the repetition discussed already. That is to say, the statement, 'And the waters grew stronger and stronger over the earth', is a repetition of what has already been stated in the previous verse. It is also discernible from everything that follows.