1480. That the Egyptians saw the woman, that she was very beautiful, means that the study of religious knowledge is pleasing for its own sake. This can be seen from remarks above at verse 11 showing that the study of knowledge is like this in our youth. ¹

It is more or less intrinsic to factual knowledge (because it is intrinsic to human beings) that at the very start we take pleasure in it for no other purpose than that of knowing. Each of us is like this. Our spirit finds intense delight in knowing — so intense that there is hardly anything we prefer. Factual knowledge is food for the spirit, which is sustained and refreshed by it, just as our outer self is sustained and refreshed by earthly food. This food for our spirit is something that is communicated to our outer self to enable it to adapt to the inner self.

[2] The different types of this food, though, arrange themselves in a hierarchy: Heavenly food is every benefit of love and charity received from the Lord. Spiritual food is every true tenet of faith. These two types of food are what an angel lives on. From them comes a kind of food that is also heavenly and spiritual but angelic in a lower degree, and this is the food that an angelic spirit lives on. From this too comes an even more humble type of heavenly and spiritual food, which has to do with reason and therefore with factual knowledge. It is the food that good spirits live on. In last place comes food for the body, which is our proper food during bodily life. These types of food correspond to each other in a miraculous way.

This too shows why and how academic studies can provide their own satisfaction. They resemble appetite and the sense of taste. So the meals we eat on earth correspond to facts in the world of spirits, and appetite and taste themselves correspond to a craving for education. This can be seen from my experiences, discussed later [§§4791-4795, 4801], the Lord in his divine mercy willing.

Footnotes:

4791. THE tongue provides a point of access to the lungs and also to the stomach, so it represents a kind of entryway to what is spiritual and what is heavenly. It represents an entry to what is spiritual because it helps the lungs and therefore speech. It represents an entry to what is heavenly because it helps the stomach, which feeds the blood and the heart. The lungs correspond to spiritual things, and the heart to heavenly things; see §§3635, 3883-3896. As a consequence, the tongue in general corresponds to a desire for truth, or to individuals in the universal human who have a desire for truth and who come to have a desire for the goodness that grows out of truth.

People who love the Lord’s Word and therefore long to know what is true and good belong to this area. However, there are differences among those who belong to the tongue itself, to the larynx and trachea, to the esophagus, to the gums, and to the lips. Not the smallest part of a human being lacks correspondence.

[2] People with a desire for truth belong to the area of the tongue (in the broad sense), as I have been allowed to experience many times through a palpable inflow sometimes into my tongue and sometimes into my lips. I have also been allowed to talk with such people. Some of them, I have observed, correspond to the inner substance of the tongue and lips, and some to the outer surface. The ones who take pleasure in receiving outer truth only, not inner truth, without actually rejecting inner truth, engage in activity that I have felt on the surface of my tongue rather than inside it.