1542. That these details and those that follow in this chapter also in the internal sense represent the Lord, and that they continue the subject of His life from childhood, becomes clear from the things which have been stated and shown in the previous chapter and also from those which follow. Above all it becomes clear from the fact that this is the Word of the Lord and has come down from Him by way of heaven, and thus that not one single part of any expression has been written down in it that does not embody heavenly arcana. With an origin such as this how can it ever be anything different? That the subject in the internal sense is the instruction received by the Lord when a boy has been shown already. There are with man two things which prevent his becoming celestial; one belongs to the understanding part of his mind, the other to the will part. Belonging to the understanding part are the useless facts which he absorbs in childhood and adolescence; belonging to the will part are the pleasures arising out of the evil desires which he inclines to. Both the former and the latter are what stand in the way of him possibly attaining to celestial things. These must first be dispersed, and when they have been dispersed he is able for the first time to be introduced into the light reflected by celestial things, and finally into celestial light itself.

[2] Because the Lord was born as any other is born and needed to be taught as any other has to be, He had also to learn facts; this was represented and meant by Abram's sojourning in Egypt. And the consideration that empty facts ultimately went away from Him was also represented by Pharaoh's giving his men orders to send him away, and his wife, and everything he had - Verse 20 of the previous chapter. The fact that the pleasures which belong to the will parts of the mind and which constitute the sensory or most external man also went away from Him is represented in this chapter by Lot separating himself from Abram, for Lot represents the sensory man.