54. Male and female He created them. What 'male and female' is used to mean in the internal sense was very well known in the Most Ancient Church, but when among later generations the interior sense of the Word was lost, so too was this particular arcanum. Marriages gave them their highest forms of happiness and delight; and they used to liken to a marriage anything that could be likened to it, in order that from it they might feel the happiness of marriage. And because they were internal men they took delight solely in internal things. As to external things, they did no more with them than take them in with their eyes, but their thoughts involved what those things represented - so much so that external things meant nothing to them except insofar as they could reflect internal things in them, and in those internal things reflect celestial things, and in so doing reflect the Lord, who was to them everything. Consequently they reflected the heavenly marriage in those things, which, they perceived, was the source of the happiness in their own marriages. For this reason they called the understanding in the spiritual man Male and the will Female, and when the two acted as one, they called it Marriage. From that Church sprang the common usage of referring to the Church itself, because of its affection for good, as 'a daughter', and also 'a virgin' - as in Virgin of Zion, Virgin of Jerusalem - and 'a wife' as well. On these matters however see verse 23 of the next chapter, and Chapter 3:15.

6176. 'And Israel's days drew near when he must die' means the state immediately before regeneration. This is clear from the meaning of 'drawing near' as being near, thus immediately before; from the meaning of 'days as states, dealt with in 23, 487, 488, 493, 893, 2788, 7462, 3785, 4850; from the representation of 'Israel' as spiritual good, dealt with above in 6169; and from the meaning of 'dying' as rising again and being roused into spiritual life, dealt with in 3326, 3498, 3505, 4618, 4621, 6036, thus being regenerated. For one who is being regenerated rises from spiritual death and is roused into new life.