5877. 'And Joseph said to his brothers' means that the internal celestial imparted a power of perception to the truths in the natural. This is clear from the meaning of 'saying' in the historical narratives of the Word as perception, dealt with in 1898, 1919, 2080, 2619, 2862, 3395, 3509, 5687, 5743, in this case an imparting of a power of perception, dealt with below; from the representation of 'Joseph' as the internal celestial, dealt with just above in 5869; and from the representation of the ten sons of Jacob, to whom 'brothers' refers here, as the truths in the natural, dealt within 5403, 5419, 5458, 5512. The internal sense is therefore this, that the internal celestial imparted a power of perception to the truths in the natural. The reason why 'saying' here means imparting a power of perception is that the subject in what follows below is the joining of the internal celestial, which is 'Joseph', to the truths in the natural, which are 'the sons of Jacob'. And when that joining together takes place an ability to perceive is imparted - through the affection for truth and thus for good.

Father in the Word means what is most interior, and in those things that are following the Lord's order, it means what is good. In the highest sense Father means the Lord Himself, the creator. In the generation of natural children it is the father who provides the soul or the most interior receptacle of life, and an internal heredity, and the mother who provides all of the substance that the soul uses to form its body, plus an external heredity. In this process the soul comes from the Lord through the father, and not from the father, since all life is from the Lord. The wise person calls the Lord his father and the church his mother because his interior loves come from the Lord, but are given form and actuality through the truths taught by the church. Those things thus brought forth are a person's spiritual "children". In the New Testament, when speaking of Jesus and the Father, what is meant is the outward manifestation with the divine itself as the soul inside. Because Jesus was born from a natural mother, He had a natural body and a natural Jewish heredity. Throughout his life as He was tempted by the hells, He slowly put off all he had from His mother and replaced it with what He had from Himself inside, the Father. In doing this he made himself one with the Father that was His inmost so He could truly say, "I and my Father are one".