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.

5347. Verses 50-52 And to Joseph were born two sons before the year of the famine came, whom Asenath, the daughter of Potiphera the priest of On, bore to him. And Joseph called the name of the firstborn Manasseh - for God has made me forget all my labour and all my father's house. And the name of the second he called Ephraim - for God has made me fruitful in the land of my affliction.

'And to Joseph were born two sons' means the good and truth born from this. 'Before the year of famine came' means which were born through the natural. 'Whom Asenath, the daughter of Potiphera the priest of On, bore to him' means which were born from the marriage. 'And Joseph called the name of the firstborn Manasseh' means a new area of will within the natural, and the essential nature of it. 'For God has made me forget all my labour' means a removal after temptations have finished. 'And all my father's house' means the removal of hereditary evils. 'And the name of the second he called Ephraim' means a new area of understanding within the natural, and the essential nature of it. 'For God has made me fruitful' means leading to a multiplication of truth from good. 'In the land of my affliction' means where the temptations were undergone.

3006. These are the things that angels perceive when the names Jesus Christ are used, and the things that are meant by its being said that in no other name is there salvation, and by what the Lord stated so many times concerning His name, as in John,

Whatever you ask in My name, I will do. John 14:13-14.

In the same gospel,

These things have been written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in His name. John 20:31.

And elsewhere. 'His name' means everything in its entirety by which the Lord is worshipped, and so the essential nature of all worship and doctrine, see 2724. Here therefore the good of love and charity is meant when joined to the truth of faith, which constitutes the fabric of doctrine and worship in their entirety.