Verse 27. (For these corruptions are common to those who are in selfish love and worldly love, which loves are first active with man from heredity, when man deliberately indulges and chooses actual evil.) [more]

9062. 'And if he strikes out the tooth of his male slave or the tooth of his female slave' means if it destroys truth or the affection for it on the level of the senses. This is clear from the meaning of 'tooth' as the outer part of the understanding, and therefore truth in the natural, dealt with above in 9052, at this point truth on the lowest level of the natural, that is, the level of the senses, since it is speaking about a male slave and a female slave; from the meaning of 'female slave' as an affection for that truth, also dealt with above, in 9059; and from the meaning of 'striking out' as destroying. What the sensory level is, and what it is like, see 4009, 5077, 5081, 5084, 5089, 5094, 5125, 5128, 5580, 5767, 5774, 6183, 6201, 6310, 6311, 6313, 6315, 6316, 6564, 6598, 6612, 6614, 6622, 6624, 6948, 6949, 7693.