4690. 'And his brothers said to him' means the adherents to faith separated from charity. This is clear from the representation of 'Joseph's brothers' as the Church which turns aside from charity to faith and at length separates faith from charity, dealt with in 4665, 4671, 4679. The more internal members of that Church however were meant by the sheaves seen in the dream, 4686, 4688. The reason 'Joseph's brothers' represent that Church is that in the proximate sense they mean that which was a representative of the Church, that is, the semblance of religion established among the descendants of Jacob. They did not, it is true, know anything of faith such as the Christian Church knows of, but they knew of truth. Truth for them consisted in the same things as faith does for Christians. What is more, the same word is used in the original language for both faith and truth. But by truth the Jewish Church meant the Ten Commandments, and also the laws, judgements, testimonies, and statutes which were handed down to it through Moses. Interior aspects of truth they neither knew nor wished to know.

[2] The Christian Church however applies the term faith to matters of doctrine which constitute the more internal features of the Church and are called matters of belief. For by faith the ordinary people understand nothing other than that contained in the Creeds or that taught by books expounding the Creeds. But those who think that matters of doctrine concerning faith or knowledge of these cannot save anyone, and that few lead the life of faith, call faith confidence. But these are above the ordinary people and are more learned than others. From these considerations one may see that the subject at this point in the internal sense is not only that representative of the Church which had been established among the descendants of Jacob but also the Christian Church that followed it. For the Lord's Word is all-embracing and in general includes every Church. Indeed the Lord foresaw what the Christian Church would be like no less than what the Jewish Church would be like, though more immediately or proximately in the case of the Jewish. This is why this sense is called the proximate or internal historical sense, and the other the internal sense.

793. From this point onwards to the end of the present chapter the subject is the people before the Flood who perished. This becomes clear from the details in the description given. People who possess the internal sense can recognize instantly, and indeed from any single word, what the subject is, better still from the combination of many. When the subject changes different words instantly appear, or else the same words combined differently. The reason is that some words are peculiar to spiritual matters, others peculiar to celestial; or what amounts to the same, some are peculiar to things of the understanding, others to those of the will. For example, 'desolation' is a word used of spiritual things, 'vastation' of celestial; 'city' is used of spiritual, 'mountain' of celestial; and so on. The same applies to combinations of words. And what is bound to amaze everybody, the difference in Hebrew is frequently just a matter of vocalization. In what belongs to the class of spiritual words the first three vowels [of the alphabet] are normally prominent, but in the case of what is celestial the last two. The fact that these verses contain a different subject is also discernible from the repetition discussed already. That is to say, the statement, 'And the waters grew stronger and stronger over the earth', is a repetition of what has already been stated in the previous verse. It is also discernible from everything that follows.