6226. 'And sat on the bed' means which was turned towards the natural. This is clear from the meaning of 'the bed' as the natural, dealt with in 6188. The reason why 'Israel sat on the bed' means that spiritual good was turned towards the natural is that in the last verse of the previous chapter, Chapter 47, 'Israel bowed himself over the head of the bed' meant that spiritual good turned itself towards things of the interior natural, see 6188, and therefore moving himself from the head and sitting on the bed means that spiritual good turned itself towards the natural. Nothing intelligible can be said to show what turning itself to the interior natural is, or to the exterior natural, because very few people know of the existence of the interior natural and the exterior natural, or that thought takes place at one time in the first, at another in the second. And people who do not know these things do not stop to reflect on them and consequently cannot have gained any knowledge of this particular matter by anything they have experienced. Yet this turning to one and then to the other goes on in everyone, though with variations; for at one time a person's thought is raised to things on a higher level, and at another it comes down to those on a lower level, so that at one time his thought looks upwards, at another time downwards.

[2] Apart from all this anyone can see that 'Israel bowed himself over the head of the bed' and that after that 'he sat on the bed' are matters which would have been too trivial for mention in the most holy Word unless they had held some arcanum within them. That arcanum cannot be brought to light except by means of the internal sense, except therefore through a knowledge of what each individual word means in the spiritual sense, that is, the sense that angels understand. For angels thoughts are not based, as men's are, on worldly, bodily, and earthly objects, but on heavenly ones. The nature of the difference between those two kinds of objects is particularly evident from correspondences, which are the subject at the ends of a number of chapters.

7779. 'From Pharaoh's firstborn who is to sit on his throne' means falsified truths of faith that occupy the first place. This is clear from the meaning of 'firstborn' as faith, dealt with in 352, 2435, 6344, 7035; from the representation of 'Pharaoh' as factual knowledge in general perverting the Church's truths, dealt with in 6015, 6651, 6679, 6683, 6692, so that 'Pharaoh's firstborn' is faith consisting of such truths, that is, faith consisting of falsified truths of faith; and from the meaning of 'throne' as the rule of truth, and in the contrary sense the rule of falsity, dealt with in 5313. The fact that 'Pharaoh's firstborn who is to sit on his throne' means falsified truths of faith that occupy the first place is evident from the use of the words 'even to the firstborn of the servant-girl who is behind the mill', which mean falsified truths of faith that occupy the very last place; besides which the king's son means that which is primary since the king is the head.

[2] Falsified truths occupying the first place are those which are taken to be essential truths, such as these: Faith saves a person irrespective of the life he has been leading; it saves a person in the final hour of his life; he is at that point pure and free from sins, which means that these are removed in an instant like dirt on the hands by water. Those falsified truths posit that faith does exist without charity, that so far as a person's salvation is concerned it does not matter what kind of life he leads, and also that a person who is a devil can become an angel of God in an instant. Such notions and others like them are the falsified truths occupying the first place; those that are immediately derived from them occupy the second place; and those which are remotely derived from them occupy the last place. For every truth has a long wide-ranging sequence of derivations, some of which are in a direct line from it, some at an angle, while those that merely touch on that truth stand on the outermost edges.

[3] The fact that such notions and others like them are falsified truths of faith is very plain to see. Does anyone who thinks properly not know that the life of faith makes a person spiritual, not faith except to the extent that it has been integrated into his life? A person's life is his love, and what he loves, that he wills and intends; and what he wills and intends, that he does. This is the essential nature (esse) of the person, not what he knows, or what he thinks but does not will. That essential nature of a person cannot possibly be changed into a different one by his thinking about mediation and salvation, only by new birth, which is being effected throughout a large part of his life. For he must be conceived, be born, and mature anew; and this is not effected by thinking and speaking, but by willing and acting.

[4] These matters have been stated because 'Pharaoh's firstborn' and 'the firstborn of the Egyptians' mean faith separated from charity, which - as has been shown in what has gone before - is not faith but the knowledge of such things as constitute faith. The reason why 'the firstborn of the Egyptians' represented that kind of faith is that the Egyptians, more than all others who constituted the representative Church after the time of the Flood, possessed a knowledge of the religious observances of the Church, 4749, 4964, 4966, 6004. At that time all ceremonies were representative of spiritual realities in heaven. The Egyptians had a greater knowledge of these than all others had; but in course of time they began to love merely their knowledge of them. They now began to think, as one finds at the present day, that the Church consisted entirely in knowing the kinds of things that have to do with the Church, and no longer in a charitable life. Thus they turned the whole order of the Church upside down; and once this had been turned upside down truths which are called the truths of faith were inevitably falsified. For if truths are applied in ways contrary to Divine order - as happens when they are applied to evils, or in the case of the Egyptians to acts of magic - they are no longer truths with those people but acquire from the evils to which they are applied the nature of falsities.

[5] Let the calf-worship among Egyptians serve to illustrate this. They knew what a calf represented, namely the good of charity. As long as they knew this and had this in mind, then when they saw calves, or when they prepared calves at charitable feasts, such as the ancients held, or later on when calves were used in sacrifices, they thought in a way that was sane and at the same time in company with the angels in heaven since a calf is for them the good of charity. But when they began to make calves of gold, place them in their temples, and worship them, they thought in an insane manner and at the same time in company with the hells. In that way they turned a true representative into a false one.