54. Male and female He created them. What 'male and female' is used to mean in the internal sense was very well known in the Most Ancient Church, but when among later generations the interior sense of the Word was lost, so too was this particular arcanum. Marriages gave them their highest forms of happiness and delight; and they used to liken to a marriage anything that could be likened to it, in order that from it they might feel the happiness of marriage. And because they were internal men they took delight solely in internal things. As to external things, they did no more with them than take them in with their eyes, but their thoughts involved what those things represented - so much so that external things meant nothing to them except insofar as they could reflect internal things in them, and in those internal things reflect celestial things, and in so doing reflect the Lord, who was to them everything. Consequently they reflected the heavenly marriage in those things, which, they perceived, was the source of the happiness in their own marriages. For this reason they called the understanding in the spiritual man Male and the will Female, and when the two acted as one, they called it Marriage. From that Church sprang the common usage of referring to the Church itself, because of its affection for good, as 'a daughter', and also 'a virgin' - as in Virgin of Zion, Virgin of Jerusalem - and 'a wife' as well. On these matters however see verse 23 of the next chapter, and Chapter 3:15.

8096. 'Perhaps the people will change their minds when they see war' means that they will fall away from the truth as a result of attacks. This is clear from the meaning of 'changing one's mind' as falling away from the truth, dealt with below; and from the meaning of 'war' as spiritual conflicts, dealt with in 1664, 1788, 2686, and so as attacks. The reason why 'changing one's mind' means falling away from the truth is that the departure of the children of Israel from Egypt, their stay in the wilderness, and their introduction into the land of Canaan mean that they were being led constantly to good, and so to heaven. So it is that changing one's mind and returning to Egypt means moving away from good and so falling away from the truth; for 'Egypt' or 'the Egyptians' means those who are governed by faith separated from charity and are opposed to the Church's truths, 6692, 7039, 7097, 7317, 7766, 7926.

[2] With regard to attacks from those governed by the truth of faith which does not spring from good, that is, those meant by 'the Philistines', it should be recognized that in the next life they molest the upright and constantly make attacks on the good of faith, which is charity. For they take with them into the next life the basic ideas they adopted in the world, and they retain them until they have undergone vastation, that is, been deprived of all their knowledge of the cognitions of faith, and have been sent down to hell. At the present day there is a great number of spirits such as these; and they live out in front on the right, on a level below the soles of the feet. The place where they live is a sort of city. I have been allowed many times to speak to spirits from there, and to listen to their reasonings in favour of faith alone, which are sharp, and their attacks on charity, which are persistent. These then are the things which are meant in the internal sense when it says that the people were not led by the way of the land of the Philistines, and that if they were they would perhaps change their minds when they saw war.