2181. 'And gave it to the servant, and he hastened to make it ready' means the joining of this good to rational good, 'the servant' meaning the natural man. This is clear from the meaning of 'a servant' as one who ministers and administers. And that which is ministered or effected is the making ready of the young bull, by which natural good is meant, as has been shown. To perceive the implications of this more clearly one should recognize that there exists in every person an internal, a rational in a middle position, and a natural, and that these three are distinct and separate from one other, as dealt with in 1889, 1940. One should also recognize that these should be made to conform so that they make one, thus so that rational good conforms with natural good, and recognize that unless they do conform and so are joined together, there cannot be any Divine perception. Since the Lord's Divine Perception is the subject here, it is the conformity and conjunction of the two kinds of good that are meant in the internal sense by the words that appear here.

1889. It is similar in this chapter with the names Abram, Sarai, Hagar, and Ishmael. What these include within themselves becomes clear from the Contents and after that from the explanation of each name in what follows. They are however things such as cannot be explained easily and intelligibly, for the subject covered by those names is the Lord's Rational - how it was conceived and born, and the nature of it before it had been united to the Lord's Internal, which was Jehovah. The reason this cannot be explained easily and intelligibly is that people at the present day do not know what the internal man is, what the interior man is, or what the exterior man is. When one speaks of the rational or of the rational man some idea can be formed of these, but when one speaks of the rational as that which lies between the internal and the external, few if any can grasp it. Nevertheless since the subject in the internal sense of this chapter is the way in which the Lord's Rational Man was conceived and born from an influx of the Internal Man into the External Man - for this is the subject embodied within the historical descriptions involving Abram, Hagar, and Ishmael and yet to prevent the ideas presented in the explanation that follows from becoming utterly strange and unintelligible, let it be recognized that with everyone there exists an internal man, there exists a rational man which is situated in between, and there exists an external man, and that these three are quite distinct and separate from one another. For these matters see what has been stated already in 978.