6684. 'Because the Hebrew women are not like the Egyptian women' means that the Church's factual knowledge is not like the factual knowledge which is at odds with it. This is clear from the meaning of 'the Hebrew women' as things that belong to the Church, dealt with in 5136, 5236, 6673, 6675; and from the meaning of 'the Egyptian women' as such things as are at odds with things belonging to the Church. These things are known facts, as is evident from what has gone before and also from the meaning of 'Egypt' as factual knowledge, 6638, here facts at odds with the Church's true factual knowledge. For the meaning of 'women' as things belonging to the Church, see 252, 253.

252. The woman' is used to mean the Church. This becomes clear from the heavenly marriage, dealt with above in 155. The heavenly marriage is one in which heaven, and so the Church, is united to the Lord by means of the proprium, even to the extent of it existing within the proprium itself; for if there is no proprium the union does not exist. And when the Lord from His mercy instills into this proprium innocence, peace, and good, it still looks like the proprium, but it is now something heavenly and richly blessed; see what has been said already in 164. But the nature of the heavenly and angelic proprium obtained from the Lord on the one hand, and the nature of the hellish and devilish proprium deriving from self on the other, defies description. The difference is like that between heaven and hell.