In general, men are driven by intellect and women by affections, and because of this men in the Bible generally represent knowledge and truth and women generally represent love and the desire for good. This generally carries over into marriage, where the man's growing knowledge and understanding and the woman's desire to be good and useful are a powerful combination. In many cases in the Bible, then, "husband" refers to things of truth and understanding, much as "man" does. Magnificent things can happen in a true marriage, though, when both partners are looking to the Lord. If a husband opens his heart to his wife, it's as though she can implant her loves inside him, transforming his intellectual urges into a love of growing wise. She in turn can grow in her love of that blooming wisdom, and use it for joy in their married life and in their caring for children and others in their life. Many couples, even in heaven, stay in that state -- called "Spiritual" -- growing deeper and deeper to eternity. There is the potential, though, for the couple to be transformed: through the nurturing love of his wife the husband can pass from a love of growing wise to an actual love of wisdom itself, and the wife can be transformed from the love of her husband's wisdom into the wisdom of that love -- the actual expression of the love of the Lord they have built together. In that state -- called "Celestial" -- the husband represents love and the desire for good, and the wife represents truth and knowledge.

7850. 'And they shall eat the flesh' means enjoyment of what is good. This is clear from the meaning of 'eating' as enjoyment, dealt with immediately above in 7849; and from the meaning of 'the flesh' as the human proprium made alive by the Lord's Divine Human, thus all the celestial and spiritual good present with a person, dealt with in 3813, 6968. The fact that 'flesh' has this meaning was very well known among the ancients; but at the present day people are so ignorant of it that everyone is amazed when 'flesh' is said to mean such. If one speaks of the proprium as the spiritual entity to which 'flesh' corresponds, people have no understanding of this. If one speaks of it as the symbolic meaning of 'flesh' they do, it is true, understand that, yet their idea is entirely different from that in which the natural object corresponds to the entity it symbolizes; that is to say, they see it as something completely separate. But in actual fact the spiritual or symbolized entity to which it corresponds is linked to it as a person's sight is linked to his eye and his hearing to his ear, and as his thought, which is spiritual, is linked to the form his interiors assume, and through that form to his organs of speech, or as his will, which too is spiritual, is linked to the fibres forming his muscles with which he acts. The same kind of relationship exists with every spiritual entity and its counterpart, that is, with every entity that is symbolized and the natural object that has a correspondence with it.

[2] Who can fail to see that 'flesh' is not used by the Lord to mean flesh or 'blood' to mean blood in John,

Truly, truly, I say to you, Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you will have no life in you. Whoever eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. For My flesh is truly food, and My blood is truly drink. John 6:53-56.

Few at the present day know that 'flesh' was used to mean the Divine Good of the Lord's Divine Love, which comes from His Divine Human, and 'blood' to mean the Divine Truth emanating from His Divine Good, and also a person's reciprocation. And those who are capable of knowing this have no wish to know it. They have no wish to know it because they have no affection for truth for its own sake, only for the sake of inducements the world offers, and also because people who think on a natural level wish to understand everything on that level.

[3] These matters have been stated in order that people may know what is meant by 'eating flesh' in the Passover supper, and what is consequently meant by it in the Holy Supper, which was instituted at the Passover supper. Regarding the bread and wine, which have the same meaning as flesh and blood, in the Holy Supper, see 2165, 2177, 2187, 3464, 3478, 3735, 3813, 4211, 4217, 4735, 4976, 5915. The fact that 'flesh' is not flesh in the spiritual sense of the Word is, in addition to other places, plainly evident from the following in John,

Come and gather yourselves to the supper of the great God, so that you may eat [the flesh of kings, and] the flesh of captains, and the flesh of mighty men, and the flesh of horses and those seated on them, and the flesh of all free men and slaves, both small and great. Revelation 19:17-18.

'The flesh', as it is used here, means varying kinds of good.