10685. 'And he was with Jehovah forty days and forty nights' means temptations before the Church, worship, and the Word exist on an internal level. This is clear from the meaning of 'forty days and nights', when it has reference to the Church with a person, as states involving temptation, dealt with in 730, 862, 2272, 2273, 8098. Before the Church, worship, and the Word exist on an internal level is meant because temptations are the means by which the internal level in a person, called the internal man, is opened up to that person and handed over to him. Consequently everyone who is being regenerated undergoes temptations. The reason why temptations are the means by which the internal level is opened up and brought into existence is that while a person is embroiled in temptations, which are conflicts against evils and falsities, the Lord flows in from the interior and fights on the person's behalf. This may be recognized by a person from the fact that at the times when he is embroiled in temptations he inwardly offers resistance; for unless he did so he would not be victorious but would go under. He is not conscious of that inward resistance during temptations, because while embroiled in them he is in the dark, on account of the evil and falsities of evil that assail him; but after temptations those with a perception of truth are conscious of it. For while a person is living in the world he has no knowledge of the things which the Lord introduces into him on an internal level, because at that time, before he enters the next life, he thinks on the level of the external or natural man, and not perceptibly on an internal level. Nevertheless he ought to know and acknowledge, when victorious in temptations, that all the fighting was done not by himself but by the Lord on his behalf.

8001. 'Shall eat it' means that he shall be together with them. This is clear from the meaning of 'eating' - eating the Passover lamb together with all the others - as communicating, and being joined together, dealt with in 2187, 5643. For the Passover supper represented, as stated above in 7836, 7891, 7996, 7997, groups of angels associated together according to forms of good and truths; and the statutes regarding foreigners, slaves, strangers, hired servants, and sojourners, who are dealt with in these verses, in the internal sense indicate who exactly could be integrated among them and who could not. This then is why 'eating' means being together with them or integrated among them, while 'not eating' means not being together among them, that is, being set apart from them.