Know (sexually)
This can, of course, be a wonderful thing: It is essential for our journey to heaven, and is the reason for the holiness of marriage. But when the men represent falsity it can also be horrendously twisted, as in the attempted homosexual rape in Sodom (Genesis 19) and the rape of the concubine in Gibeah (Judges 19). In a general sense, men represent things of the intellect -- facts, ideas, knowledge, everything from the deepest truths to the most pernicious falsities about life and the Lord. Women in general represents things of affection -- desire, passion, caring, everything from the most exalted love for the Lord to the darkest hatred. When a man “knows” a woman in the Bible, then, it represents a joining together of those intellectual and affectionate faculties. “Know" is also often used in connection with virginity. A women who has “not known a man” represents the affection for truth, unsullied by falsity.
True Christian Religion #143
143. The production of those virtues is the province of the Holy Spirit, whom the Lord sends to those who believe in Him and make themselves fit to receive Him. This is what is meant by the Spirit in these and other passages:
I will give you a new heart and a new spirit, I will put my spirit within you, and make you walk according to my statutes 1 . Ezekiel 36:26-27; 11:19.
Create a clean heart in us, o God, and make new a steadfast spirit within me. Bring back to me the joy of your salvation, and let the Spirit which acts of its own accord uphold me, Psalms 51:10, 12.
Jehovah forms the spirit of man within him, Zechariah 12:1.
With my soul I have waited for you by night, and with my spirit within me I have waited for you in the morning, Isaiah 26:9 Make yourselves a new heart and a new spirit. Why will you die, o house of Israel? Ezekiel 18:31.
In these passages a new heart means the will to do good, and a new spirit the understanding of truth. It is clear from what it says there that the Lord effects these things with those who do good and believe the truth, that is, those who have the faith of charity, when it says that God gives breath to those that walk according to His statutes 1 , and that it is called 'the Spirit which acts of its own accord.' It is clear that man must take action on his own side from the words, 'Make yourselves a new heart and a new spirit. Why will you die, o house of Israel?'
Voetnoten:
1. The Latin has 'in the way of salvation', but this is corrected in the author's copy.
