54. We can see from the following passages that circumcision represented purification from evils that are caused by strictly earthly love:

Circumcise your heart and take away the foreskin of your heart, so that my wrath will not break forth because of the ill will of your deeds. (Jeremiah 4:4)

Circumcise the foreskin of your heart and no longer stiffen your neck. (Deuteronomy 10:16)

To circumcise the heart or the foreskin of the heart is to purify ourselves from evils.

Conversely, then, being uncircumcised or having a foreskin refers to people who have not been purified from evils caused by strictly earthly love and who are therefore not devoted to caring, and since having a foreskin means being unclean at heart, it says that no one who is uncircumcised at heart or uncircumcised in the flesh is to enter the sanctuary (Ezekiel 44:9); that no uncircumcised person is to eat the Passover meal (Exodus 12:48); and that the uncircumcised are damned (Ezekiel 28:10; 31:18; 32:19).

War in the Word represents the combat of temptation when good loves are assaulted by evil loves or false ideas. The evil that attacks comes from one of the many societies of hell, and it operates by arousing a selfish love in our mind that is contrary to what we know is right. Then our selfish love attacks the love that nourishes the wish to be a good person, and there is war in our minds. This is represented by wars that the children of Israel fought in and around the land of Canaan, of which there is a long history in the old testament. The selfish loves abound in our minds from our heredity, and the good loves come along with our conscience as it develops. If we had no conscience we couldn't be tempted; we would immediately follow the wishes of our selfishness and give in. But then the end result is that we are in slavery to the hells and will do whatever they want.

(Odkazy: Arcana Coelestia 1659 [3], 1664, 1683, 1788 [2])