1166. In the Word 'Put' or Libya means cognitions drawn from the literal sense, which in a similar way confirm false assumptions. 'Put' also means simply such cognitions. This is clear from places quoted already where Cush is referred to. Because Cush too means cognitions, though interior ones, Put and Cush are mentioned together in the Word. Among the places quoted above, see Jeremiah 46:9; Ezekiel 30:4-6; Nahum 3:9; Daniel 11:43.

5871. 'Make every man go out from me' means that incompatible and contradictory factual knowledge was to be cast away from the centre. This is clear from the meaning of 'every man from him' as factual knowledge, for the men were Egyptians, and by 'Egyptians' is meant factual knowledge, see 1164, 1165, 1186, 1462, 5700, 5702; and since it was cast aside it follows that it was incompatible and contradictory. For the situation is this: When the truths present in the external or natural man become joined to the good present in the internal man - that is, when the truths of faith are joined to the good of charity - all factual knowledge which is incompatible, and especially that which is contradictory, is cast away from the centre to the sides, thus from the light in the centre to the shadowy parts at the sides. When this happens that knowledge is in part disregarded and in part treated as valueless. But from the remaining factual knowledge which is compatible and harmonious, a kind of extraction - or if one can use the expression, a kind of distillation - takes place, from which the inner meaning of things is obtained, a meaning that no one perceives while in the body except through some joyful feeling, like that experienced at daybreak. Such is the way in which the joining of the truth of faith to the good of charity is effected.