435. As regards 'the man and his wife' here being used to mean the new Church which earlier on was meant by 'Adah and Zillah', this nobody can know or deduce from the sense of the letter, for previously 'the man (homo) and his wife' meant the Most Ancient Church and its descendants. The point is clear however from the internal sense, and also from the fact that a little further on, in verses 3-4 of the next chapter, reference is again made, though the wording is entirely different, to the man and his wife begetting Seth. At that point the first generation of the descendants of the Most Ancient Church is meant. Unless something different were meant at this point there would be no need to say the same thing again. A parallel to this exists in Chapter 1, where the subject is the creation of man, and also of the fruits of the earth, and of beasts; followed by Chapter 2, where similar events are described, the reason for the similarity being, as has been stated, that Chapter 1 deals with the creation of the spiritual man, Chapter 2 with the creation of the celestial man. When this kind of repetition of one and the same person or thing occurs, something different is meant on the first occasion from the second. But the exact meaning cannot possibly be known except from the internal sense. The actual train of thought in like manner establishes the meaning here. And there is the added consideration that 'man and wife' is a general expression meaning that Church, which is the subject here and from which the new Church was born.

5688. 'Is this your youngest brother, whom you said [something about] to me?' means born after all of them, as they well knew. This is clear from the meaning of 'youngest brother' as the one born after all of them, dealt with in what follows; and from the meaning of 'whom you said to me' as that which was perceived by them. For 'saying' means that which has been perceived, see immediately above in 5687, and so means what is well known. The reason Benjamin is called here, as he in fact was, their 'youngest brother' - that is, the one born after all of them, or the youngest by birth - is that in the spiritual sense the intermediary, which 'Benjamin' represents, is likewise the one that comes last. The intermediary in a person is born last of all; for when a person is undergoing spiritual birth - that is, when he is being born again - his rational, which is his inner man, is regenerated first by the Lord, then the natural after that, the rational being the means by which the Lord regenerates the natural, 3286, 3288, 3321, 3493, 4612. Now since the intermediary must be derived from both these - both from the spiritual rational or rational that has been made new, and from the natural - and since the intermediary cannot be derived from the natural unless this too has been made new, the intermediary is inevitably born at a later stage, and then only insofar as the natural is regenerated.

[2] Everything recorded in the Word regarding the sons of Jacob happened for a providential reason, which was that the Word might be written dealing with them and their descendants. This Word was to contain heavenly realities, and in the highest sense Divine ones, which those sons in actual fact represented. This was no less so in the case of Benjamin who, being the one born last of all, represented the intermediary between the internal and the external, that is, between the celestial of the spiritual which was the Lord's when He was in the world and the natural which was also the Lord's and which He was to make Divine.

[3] Everything recorded about Joseph and his brothers represents in the highest sense the glorification of the Lord's Human, that is, the way in which the Lord made the Human within Himself Divine. The reason this is what is represented in the inmost sense is so that in its inmost sense the Word may be completely holy. A further reason is that every detail recorded may contain within itself what can pass into angelic wisdom; for it is well known that angelic wisdom so surpasses man's wisdom that man can hardly begin to comprehend any of it. The actual happiness of the angels resides in the fact that every detail has to do with the Lord; for they abide in Him. Furthermore the glorification of the Lord's Human is the pattern for a person's regeneration, which is why a person's regeneration is also presented in the internal sense at the same time as the subject of the Lord's glorification is dealt with. A person's regeneration and the countless arcana associated with it also passes into angelic wisdom and brings the angels happiness insofar as they apply those arcana to useful services, which look to a person's reformation.