4855. 'To Timnah' means the state, namely the state when the interests of the Church were consulted. This is also evident from the Book of Judges, where Samson is described as going down to Timnah to take a wife there from the daughters of the Philistines. Judges 14:1-4, 7. There likewise 'Timnah' means a state when the interests of the Church are consulted. The wife he took from the daughters of the Philistines is in the representative sense truth received from what is not good, and so is truth rendered obscure, which is also represented here by 'Tamar' - the Philistines being those who have a knowledge of matters of doctrine regarding faith but who do not lead lives in accordance with these, 1197, 1198, 3412, 3413. In addition to this, the name Timnah appears among the places belonging to the inheritance of the tribe of Dan, Joshua 19:43. All place-names in the Word have spiritual realities and states as their meaning, see 1224, 1264, 1888, 3422, 4298, 4442.

3422. 'Like the names which his father had called them' means meaningful signs of truth. This is clear from the fact that the names which were given in ancient times to persons, places, and things all carried spiritual meanings, see 340, 1946, 2643. Thus the names given to springs and wells were meaningful signs of the things which springs and wells had been used to mean in former times; and those things were matters of truth, as shown in 2702, 3096. And because names carried a spiritual meaning, the expressions 'name' and 'calling by name' also mean in general the essential nature either of a real thing or of a state, as said immediately above in 3421. That being so, any name used in the Word does not in its internal sense mean some person, or some nation, or some kingdom, or some city, but in every case some real thing. Anyone may deduce from this that 'wells' here means something belonging to heaven, for if this were not the case, so many details concerning wells would not have been worth mentioning in the Divine Word - since knowledge of them would be no use at all, such as that the Philistines stopped up the wells which Abraham's servants had dug; that Isaac dug them again and called them by names like those they had had previously; and that after that Isaac's servants dug a well in the valley, a well over which the herdsmen disputed; and that he dug yet another, which they also disputed over; and following that another which they did not dispute over; and yet another; and at length that they gave him an account of the new well, verses 15, 18-22, 25, 32-33. But the thing belonging to heaven that is meant by these is now evident from the internal sense.