4355. Verses 5-7 And he lifted up his eyes and saw the women and their sons, and said, Who are these with you? And he said, The sons whom God has graciously bestowed on your servant. And the servant-girls came near, they and their sons, and bowed down. And Leah also came near, then her sons, and they bowed down; and after that Joseph came near, then Rachel, and they bowed down.

'He lifted up his eyes' means a perception . . . 'And saw the women and their sons' means, of the affections for truth and of the truths which belong to those affections. 'And said, Who are these with you?' means acknowledgement. 'And he said, The sons whom God has graciously bestowed on your servant' means truths conferred by Divine Providence. 'And the servant-girls came near, they and their sons, and bowed down' means sensory knowledge and its truths, and their submission. 'And Leah also came near, then her sons, and they bowed down' means the affection for the truth of faith so far as exterior things and their truths are concerned, and their submissive introduction. 'And after that Joseph came near, then Rachel, and they bowed down' means affections for the truth of faith so far as interior things are concerned, and their submissive introduction.

In the physical world, the places we inhabit and the distances between them are physical realities, and we have to get our physical bodies through the physical space between to get from one physical place to another physical place. In the spiritual world, however, the "places" we inhabit and the “distances” between them are spiritual realities, which means they are reflections of our thoughts and affections. "Going" from one place to another, then, is a change in spiritual state -- exploring different thoughts and embracing different feelings. Since the Bible is a spiritual book, "going" there also indicates a change or progression in spiritual state, from one mode of thinking and feeling to another mode of thinking and feeling. Obviously, this makes the precise meaning of "go" in the Bible highly dependent on context: Who is going? Where are they going? Why are they going there? Are they following someone or something? Those questions are crucial to the precise meaning. Used on its own, though, "going" represents the normal progression of life, moving through spiritual states as the Lord intends. This has its roots in early Biblical times, when people were nomadic and moved from place to place in a regular progression of life.