4344. 'And over towards the two servant-girls' means beneath the affection for the things that serve those two affections. This is clear from the meaning of 'the servant-girls' as the affections for knowledge and for cognitions, dealt with in 1895, 2567, 3835, 3849, and as subservient means employed in the joining together of the external man and the internal, dealt with in 3913, 3917; and from the representation of Zilpah and Bilhah, to whom 'the servant-girls' refers here, as subservient exterior affections that are employed as means, dealt with in 3849, 3931.

“Servant” literally means “a person who serves another," and its meaning is similar in reference to its spiritual meanings of the Bible. Our lives in their most outward form -- the physical actions we take and the thoughts and feelings directly connected to them -- are in a way “servants” to our deeper, more hidden, internal thoughts and desires. So in most cases, “servants” in the Bible represent things we're doing and thinking on that outward, external level. Servants can have good masters or evil ones, obviously, and a servant doing good work in service of an evil master is actually making the world a more evil place. So the precise meaning of a given servant in the Bible depends on the nature of the master he or she is serving. Finally, when the Bible is addressing the Lord's own spiritual development, “servant” represents the Lord's most outward aspect: the human body he inherited from Mary, with all its frailties and potential for temptation.