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.