4786. 'And his father wept for him' means interior mourning. This is clear from the meaning of 'weeping' as the extremity of grief and sadness, and so as interior mourning. In the ancient Churches the external practices by which, internal things were represented included those of wailing and weeping over the dead. Their wailing and weeping meant interior mourning, although their actual mourning was not interior. One reads the following, for example, about the Egyptians who had set out with Joseph to bury Jacob,

When they came to the threshing-floor of Atad which is at the crossing of the Jordan they wailed there with an exceedingly great and grievous wailing, and he mourned for his father seven days. And the inhabitants of the land, the Canaanites, saw the mourning at the threshing-floor of Atad, and they said, This is a grievous mourning by the Egyptians. Genesis 50:10-11.

And one reads about David weeping over Abner,

They buried Abner in Hebron, and the king lifted up his voice and wept at the grave of Abner; and all the people wept. 2 Samuel 3:32.

674. It has been shown already in 40 that 'birds' means intellectual or rational concepts, and in 45, 46, 142, 143, 146, that 'beasts' means desires of the will, or affections. That 'creeping thing of the ground' means the lowest things of each of these may be evident to anyone from the consideration that what creeps along the ground is the lowest of all. That 'pairs of all shall enter in to keep them alive' means the regeneration of those things was stated in the previous verse.