6282. 'May he bless the boys' means, May he make it possible for them to have truth and goodness. This is clear from the meaning of 'blessing' as endowing with truth and goodness, for in the spiritual sense 'a blessing' does not imply anything else, 1420, 1422, 4981; and from the representation of Ephraim and Manasseh, to whom 'the boys' refers here, as the Church's understanding and the Church's will, to which truth and good were to be imparted, truth to its understanding and good to its will.

The number "four" in the Bible represents things being linked together or joined. This is partly because four is two times two, and two represents the ultimate linking between our desire to be good and our understanding of truth. We can also see this in the fact that most buildings are rectangular, with the four sides linking together to make a whole. We also divide directions into four -- north, east, south and west -- and talk about the "four corners" of something meaning all of it. So our special thinking naturally looks at four sides as linking together into a whole.

(Referenties: Apocalypse Explained 417; Arcana Coelestia 1686, 9103, 9601, 9767, 9864)