4387. 'And Esau returned on that day on his own way, to Seir' means the state at that time of Divine Natural Good to which the goods of truth had been linked. This is clear from the meaning of 'day' as state, dealt with in 23, 487, 488, 493, 893, 2788, 3462 - hence 'he returned on that day' means the state which it assumed at that point; from the representation of 'Esau' as Divine Natural Good, dealt with above in 4340; from the meaning of 'way' as truth, dealt with in 627, 2333, in this case the good of truth, which is truth in will and action, 4337, 4353; and from the meaning of 'Seir' as the joining of truth to good, dealt with above in 4384. These different meanings when drawn together to give one overall sense show that the words used here mean the state at that time of Divine Natural Good to which the goods of truth had been linked.

[2] It is not at all apparent from the historical sense of these words that such ideas are meant by them. All the same, it is just these ideas that those words hold within them in the spiritual or internal sense. For heaven, which is within man - that is, the angels who reside with him - do not have the slightest interest in details to do with the history of the world. Neither do they know who or what Esau was, who or what Seir was. Nor do they have any thought of the day when Esau returned or of the way to Seir; instead they gather ideas of the spiritual things which correspond to those historical facts, instantly deriving such a spiritual meaning from them. For correspondences work in the following way: They are very much like a person talking in a foreign language to someone else who instantly understands what is meant as if in his own language, the sounds and pronunciation of the words actually used being no hindrance to him. So it is with the internal sense of the Word, which sense is in perfect agreement with the universal language which angels use, that is, with the spiritual speech which is expressive of their thought. Their speech is spiritual because their thought is a product of the light of heaven which shines from the Lord.

Like so many common verbs, the meaning of "know" in the Bible is varied and dependent on context. And in some cases -- when it is connected to ideas or objects -- its spiritual meaning and natural meaning are essentially the same. When the Bible talks about people knowing each other and especially when it talks about the Lord knowing people, the meaning has more to do with the states of love within people than it does with any factual knowledge. This makes sense if you think about it. When we really "know" somebody, what we mean is that we know what kind of person they are, what their motivations are, what they love, what they hate, what makes them tick. Those things are far more important than knowing their parents' names, where they were born or what year they graduated from school. Most often then, especially applied to people, "knowing" has to do with the perceptions we have about other people's loves and the conjunction that can exist between those with similar loves, not just a collection of facts.