6848. 'And Moses hid his face' means that interior things were protected. This is clear from the meaning of 'face' as interior things, dealt with in 1999, 2434, 3527, 4066, 4796, 4797, 5102. The fact that 'hiding' means protecting follows from the train of thought in the internal sense, for it says that 'he hid his face, for he was afraid to look at God', meaning for fear that internal things should suffer harm from the presence of the Divine itself. The implications of this will be stated in what follows immediately below.

4066. 'And Jacob saw Laban's face' means a change of state with that good when the good meant by Jacob was departing from it. This is clear from the representation of 'Jacob' as the good of the Natural, and from the representation of 'Laban' as intermediate good, both of which have often been dealt with already; and from the meaning of 'the face' as things that are interior, 358, 1999, 2434, 3527, 3573, in this case as changes of such interiors, or what amounts to the same, changes of state, for it is said that he saw his face 'and behold, he was not at all friendly towards him as before'. The reason why in the Word the things that are interior are meant by 'the face' is that those things shine out of a person's face, and present themselves in his face as in a mirror or in an image; and so 'the face' or the countenance means the states in which a person's thoughts and those in which his affections reside.