In most places in the Word, "ten" represents "all," or in some cases "many" or "much." The Ten Commandments represent all the guidance we get from the Lord in life; the ten horns on the beast of Revelation represent all power of falsity; the ten virgins with lamps in Matthew 25 represent all people of the church.

Yet in other places, ten, or especially a "tenth," signifies representing remnants, or tiny scraps of goodness preserved for the future. These can be the remnants of a church -- a few good people that can be built up into a new church. Or they can be tiny subconscious memories of love and joy which the Lord stores in each of us in early childhood, feelings He can use later to draw us toward a life of goodness and affection.

These two meanings seem nearly opposite, but they're actually not. Love is whole and indivisible, so that the tiniest feeling buried inside someone contains all the elements of the love it can become. In a similar way, a remnant of a church that has preserved that church's knowledge has everything it needs to grow into a new church. In a sense, then, those remnants are indeed "all," they're just a version of "all" that is still in a state of potential.

5710. 'And drank plentifully' means in abundance. This is clear from the meaning of 'drinking' as applying truths beneath good, dealt with immediately above in 5709; therefore 'drinking plentifully' means an application of truths in abundance.

From the explanations given in this chapter it is evident that the subject has been an introductory stage to the joining of the natural to the celestial of the spiritual. But the subject in the next chapter is the first stage when they are actually joined together, that first stage being represented by Joseph's revelation of himself to his brothers, and the second stage by his going to meet his father and his brothers and bringing them down into Egypt.