2110. 'When he was circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin' means purification. This is clear from the meaning of 'being circumcised' as being purified from self-love and the love of the world, dealt with in 2039, and from the meaning of 'flesh of the foreskin' as the removal of those loves, dealt with in 2041, 2053, 2057.

541. There were some who, not knowing what heavenly joy was, were carried away unexpectedly into heaven. To enable them to be taken up they had been brought into that state where the physical impulses and false notions have been lulled to sleep. I heard from there one of them telling me that he now felt for the first time how much joy there was in heaven, and that in holding to a different idea of it he had been grossly misled. In his inmost being he now felt this as something immeasurably superior to any pleasure men delight in during the life of the body, and which he called something base.