In a general sense, being "born" in the Bible represents one spiritual state producing another, usually some form of love or affection producing or "giving birth" to truth or to desires for good. This is not hard to see: If you love someone, that love naturally gives birth to ideas on how to be good to that person and make him or her happy. This is why sons and daughters in the Bible represent true ideas and desires for good. On a higher level, though, being born represents what the Writings call "regeneration," or the life-long process of putting off our natural thoughts and desires and embracing spiritual life from the Lord. This is what the Bible means when it talks about being "born again" – if we live our lives from the Lord, He will eventually take away our evil desires so that we can be "born" as angels in heaven, free of evil desires and dark thoughts. Of course, these two levels of meaning are really one: The Lord is love itself, and if we align with Him we become forms of love and truth ourselves, expressions of His love just as the desire to do something good might be the expression of your love for a friend.

5349. 'before the year of the famine came' means which were born through the natural. This is clear from the meaning of 'before the year of the famine came' as while the state lasted when truth derived from good was multiplied. This state is meant by 'the years of abundance of corn', and so that which came before the state of desolation meant by 'the years of famine'. Because in the state that came first truth derived from good was multiplied in the natural, so that good and truth were born to the celestial of the spiritual through the natural, that which followed as a consequence is therefore meant by the words used here.

1224. From these considerations it is clear what these names mean in the internal sense, namely that the Ancient Church, which was an internal Church, was endowed with wisdom, intelligence, knowledge, and cognitions of truth and good. Such things are contained in the internal sense even though merely names occur from which nothing is seen in the literal sense, apart from these being just so many origins, or fathers of nations, and so nothing of a doctrinal nature is seen, still less anything spiritual and celestial. The same applies in the Prophets where lists of names are sometimes given which in the internal sense mean real things following one after another in a lovely order.