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.

7045. 'And cut off the foreskin of her son' means the removal of filthy kinds of love, as a result of which the internal is laid bare. This is clear from the meaning of 'cutting off' as removing; from the meaning of 'the foreskin' as earthly and bodily love which defiles spiritual and celestial love, dealt with in 3412, 4462; and from the meaning of 'son' as the truth which the representative Church possesses. For the meaning of 'son' as truth, see 489, 491, 533, 1147, 2623, 3773; and the reason why the truth which that Church possesses is meant here is that 'Zipporah' represents that Church and calls him 'her son'. She also uses him to show the actual nature of that nation and consequently the actual nature of its worship. 'The foreskin' means filthy kinds of love for the following reason: The loins and genital organs correspond to conjugial love, 5050-5062; and since they correspond to conjugial love they also correspond to every kind of celestial and spiritual love, 686, 4277, 4280, 5054. The foreskin therefore corresponds to the kinds of love that are very much external, which are called bodily and earthly loves. If these loves are devoid of the internal kinds of love that are called spiritual and celestial loves, they are filthy, as they were with that nation which had externals without an internal. The words 'without an internal' are used, and by this is meant no acknowledgement of truth and no affection for good, thus no faith and no charity; for these are qualities that belong to the internal man and from them spring ways of exercising charity, which are external forms of good. The Lord speaks of that internal, when it is devoid of faith and charity and yet full of evils and falsities, as that which is 'empty', in Matthew 12:43-45. This is what 'external without an internal' serves to describe. So then 'the foreskin' means the kinds of love that are very much external; therefore when those kinds of love have been removed, meant by Zipporah's cutting off the foreskin, the actual nature of them is seen, and the internal is accordingly laid bare.