This can, of course, be a wonderful thing: It is essential for our journey to heaven, and is the reason for the holiness of marriage. But when the men represent falsity it can also be horrendously twisted, as in the attempted homosexual rape in Sodom (Genesis 19) and the rape of the concubine in Gibeah (Judges 19). In a general sense, men represent things of the intellect -- facts, ideas, knowledge, everything from the deepest truths to the most pernicious falsities about life and the Lord. Women in general represents things of affection -- desire, passion, caring, everything from the most exalted love for the Lord to the darkest hatred. When a man “knows” a woman in the Bible, then, it represents a joining together of those intellectual and affectionate faculties. “Know" is also often used in connection with virginity. A women who has “not known a man” represents the affection for truth, unsullied by falsity.

542. And the dragon stood before the woman who was ready to give birth, to devour her Child as soon as it was born. This symbolically means that those people meant by the dragon endeavor to snuff out the doctrine of the New Church at its first appearance.

For the people who are meant by the dragon, see no. 537 above. That the woman symbolizes the New Church, no. 533. That to give birth means, symbolically, to accept doctrinal goods and truths from the Word, no. 535. That the Child that she bore symbolizes the doctrine of the New Church - this will be seen in the exposition following next. To devour means, symbolically, to snuff out because the Child symbolizes doctrine, and when a child is said to be devoured, the doctrine is said to be extinguished.

We say that this occurs at the doctrine's first appearance because we are told that the dragon stood before the woman to devour her Child as soon as it was born.