In most places in the Word, "ten" represents "all," or in some cases "many" or "much." The Ten Commandments represent all the guidance we get from the Lord in life; the ten horns on the beast of Revelation represent all power of falsity; the ten virgins with lamps in Matthew 25 represent all people of the church.

Yet in other places, ten, or especially a "tenth," signifies representing remnants, or tiny scraps of goodness preserved for the future. These can be the remnants of a church -- a few good people that can be built up into a new church. Or they can be tiny subconscious memories of love and joy which the Lord stores in each of us in early childhood, feelings He can use later to draw us toward a life of goodness and affection.

These two meanings seem nearly opposite, but they're actually not. Love is whole and indivisible, so that the tiniest feeling buried inside someone contains all the elements of the love it can become. In a similar way, a remnant of a church that has preserved that church's knowledge has everything it needs to grow into a new church. In a sense, then, those remnants are indeed "all," they're just a version of "all" that is still in a state of potential.

7014. And Moses went, and returned. That this signifies continuation of the former life, is evident from the signification of “going,” as being life (see n. 4882, 5493, 5605); from the signification of “returning,” or “going back,” as being to live where he lived before; and from the representation of Moses, as being the Lord as to the law or truth from the Divine (n. 6771, 6827). When Moses was in Mount Horeb with Jehovah seen in a flame, he then represented the Lord as to Divine truth; but now with Jethro his father-in-law, who is the good of the church which is in the truth of simple good, he represents the Lord as to truth from the Divine. Here and elsewhere in the Word, in the internal sense, are described all the states of the Lord’s life in the world, how He then made His Human Divine. That the states were successive, can be seen from the fact that the Lord when an infant was like an infant, and that He afterward grew in intelligence and wisdom, and continually instilled into these the Divine love, even until He became the Divine love, that is, the Divine being or Jehovah, as to His Human also. And as the Lord in this way successively put on the Divine, He therefore first made Himself truth from the Divine, afterward Divine truth, and at last the Divine good. These were the steps of the glorification of the Lord which are described here and elsewhere in the internal sense of the Word.