6675. 'He said, When you act as midwives to the Hebrew women and see them on the birthstools' means a discernment of the truth and good flowing from the internal into the Church's factual knowledge. This is clear from the meaning of 'acting as a midwife' as the reception of goodness and truth flowing from the internal into the natural, for inasmuch as the natural receives influx it is 'a midwife', see 4588, 6673; from the meaning of 'the Hebrew women as things that belong to the Church, dealt with in 5136, 5236; from the meaning of 'seeing' as a discernment, dealt with in 2150, 3764, 4567, 4723, 5400; and from the meaning of 'the birthstools' as things in the natural that receive the forms of good and the truths flowing from the internal, thus true factual knowledge, since that knowledge is what receives them. From this it is evident that 'when you act as midwives to the Hebrew women and see them on the birthstools' means a discernment of the truth and good flowing from the internal into the Church's factual knowledge, which resides in the natural.

2026. That 'I will give to you' means that the things which exist in heaven and on earth are His follows from what has just been stated. In the sense of the letter 'giving to you' means that God or Jehovah would give to Him, as is also declared in the Word of the Gospel-writers about the Father giving all things in heaven and on earth to Him. But in the internal sense in which truth itself is presented in its purity, the meaning is that the Lord acquired it to Himself, because within Him and within every part of Him Jehovah was present, as has been stated. further light can be shed on this by the following analogy: It is as though the interior or rational man, or else thought, were to say that the bodily part of him would discover peace and quiet if it were to refrain from doing this or that. In this case the one who speaks is the same as the one spoken to, for the rational belongs to that person just as much as the bodily part. When therefore the former is spoken of the latter also is meant.

[2] Besides, the fact that things in heaven and on earth are the Lord's is clear from very many places in the Word, from many in the Old Testament as well as from the following in the Gospels, Matthew 11:27; 28:18; Luke 10:22; John 3:34-35; 17:2, and from what has been shown in Volume One, in 458, 551, 552, 1607. And because the Lord governs the whole of heaven He also governs everything on earth, for the two are so interconnected that whoever governs one governs all. For dependent on the heaven of angels is the heaven of angelic spirits; dependent on the heaven of angelic spirits is the world of spirits; and dependent in turn on the world of spirits is the human race. And dependent in like manner on the heavens is everything in the world and the natural order, for without influx from the Lord by way of the heavens nothing in the natural order and its three kingdoms can ever come into existence and remain in existence; see 1632.