3168. 'And they ate and drank' means making one's own the good and truth introduced in this way. This is clear from the meaning of 'eating' as being communicated and joined together, thus being made one's own, dealt with in 2187, 2343, and more specifically (since 'eating' has reference to bread and 'bread' means good, 276, 680, 2165, 2177, 2187) making good one's own; and from the meaning of 'drinking' as being communicated and joined together, thus being made one's own, dealt with in 3089, and more specifically (since 'drinking' has reference to wine and 'wine' means truth, 1071, 1798) making truth one's own. The situation is as stated above in 3167, namely that when truth is introduced into good in the rational, more so when it is joined to it, the good and truth of the spiritual man, that is, spiritual things, become made over to the natural as its own.

''To stop up wells,' as inGenesis 26:15, denotes to be unwilling to know truths, and to deny them, and so to obliterate them. In Genesis 21, 'wells' signify doctrines, both those disputed and not disputed. Without this significance digging wells and disputing about them would have been too trivial to be mentioned in the divine Word.

(റഫറൻസുകൾ: Arcana Coelestia 2702 [1-17])