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.

5928. 'And Benjamin wept on his neck' means an acceptance and reciprocal response. This is clear from the fact that it is an action repeated in return, and is therefore an acceptance and reciprocal response. As regards the joining of good to truths, and the responsive joining of truths to good, it should be recognized that when good flows into truths and joins them to itself it does so by pouring good into them from itself and thereby attaching them to itself, and then the two are joined together. Now because when this happens the truths receive life they appear after that to act independently when they act in response, or react to the good. Nevertheless the truths do not act independently but are moved by the good flowing into the good which was added from itself to the truths. It is like the blood vessels in a living body. The truths are like those vessels without blood in, them, whereas the good is like the blood itself. When the blood pours itself into the vessels which previously were empty it activates them. The vessels respond, because from the blood they receive motion and so to speak life. From all this one may see what is implied by the joining of good to truths, and the responsive joining of truths to good.