8001. 'Shall eat it' means that he shall be together with them. This is clear from the meaning of 'eating' - eating the Passover lamb together with all the others - as communicating, and being joined together, dealt with in 2187, 5643. For the Passover supper represented, as stated above in 7836, 7891, 7996, 7997, groups of angels associated together according to forms of good and truths; and the statutes regarding foreigners, slaves, strangers, hired servants, and sojourners, who are dealt with in these verses, in the internal sense indicate who exactly could be integrated among them and who could not. This then is why 'eating' means being together with them or integrated among them, while 'not eating' means not being together among them, that is, being set apart from them.

2273. That 'He said, I will not do it for the sake of the forty' means that they will be saved is clear without explanation. Regarding those who are meant by 'the forty-five' in the previous verse, it was said, 'I will not destroy it if I find forty-five', which meant that they would not perish if goods could be joined to truths. In the verse that follows here which has regard to 'the forty' it is said, 'I will not do it for the sake of the forty', which does not mean that people would be saved merely because of temptations, for there are some undergoing temptations who give way, so that in their case goods are not joined to truths. Nor indeed is anyone saved because of temptations if he places any merit in them, for if he places any merit in temptations he does so from self-love, in that he boasts about his temptations and believes that he has merited heaven more than others, and at the same time he is thinking about his own pre-eminence over others, despising others in comparison with himself, all of which is contrary to mutual love and consequently to heavenly blessedness.

[2] The temptations in which a person is victorious entail the belief that all others are more worthy than he, and that he is more like those in hell than those in heaven, for ideas such as these present themselves to him in temptations. When therefore after temptations a person enters into ways of thinking that are contrary to this outlook it is a sign that he has not been victorious, for the thoughts he had in temptations are those towards which the thoughts that he has following temptations can be turned. But if the thoughts he has after temptations cannot be turned in the direction of those he had during them, he has either given way in temptation, or he has departed into similar, and sometimes graver ones, till he has been brought to that healthier outlook in which he believes he has merited nothing. From this it is clear that 'forty' means people with whom by means of temptations goods have been joined to truths.