6025. Further explanation of these verses can be dispensed with since they are mere names. What those names mean may be seen from the general explanation given immediately above in 6024; and what Jacob's actual sons mean may be seen in the explanation where their births are dealt with. But the following observation is worth making, that no son was born to Jacob's sons in Egypt when they came there, though they were still young men; all their sons were born in the land of Canaan. They themselves, apart from Benjamin, were born in Paddan Aram; and this was for a particular reason that the Lord in His Divine Providence had in view, which was that aspects of the Church might be represented by them from when they were born. Their being born in Paddan Aram represented the fact that a member of the Church must be born anew or regenerated through knowledge or cognitions of goodness and truth, for Paddan Aram means that knowledge, 3664, 3680, 4107, while their actual birth represented the new birth effected through faith and charity, 4668, 5160, 5598, and so at the initial stage through knowledge of them. But the birth of all Jacob's sons' sons in the land of Canaan represented the fact that the kinds of things that constitute the Church spring from that knowledge, for 'the land of Canaan' is the Church, 3705, 3686, 4447, 4454, 4517, 5136, 5757. The birth of Joseph's sons took place in Egypt however so as to represent the dominion of the internal man within the external, especially the dominion of the celestial of the spiritual within the natural. 'Manasseh' is the new area of will within the natural, and 'Ephraim' the new area of understanding there, which the Church possesses.

5598. 'And our generation' means regarding the truths of faith there. This is clear from the meaning of 'generation' as the birth of truth from good or faith from charity, dealt with in 1145, 1255, 4070, 4668. The reason 'generation' has this meaning in the internal sense is that in heaven no other kind of birth is meant than what is called regeneration, which is effected by means of the truth of faith and the good of charity. By this kind of generation or birth the children of men become the children of the Lord; these are they who are called 'the born of God' in John 1:13. The variations that exist in the offspring of good from truth and truth from good within that kind of generation are what determine the brotherly or blood relationships and the relationships by marriage that exist in heaven.

[2] In heaven unending variations exist; but those variations are effected by the Lord in such a way that they resemble families in which there are brothers, sisters, sons-in-law, daughters-in-law, grandsons, granddaughters, and so on. In general however all are organized into the kind of form that makes one united whole. They are like the variations within the human body, in which no one member is exactly the same as any other; indeed no one part within any member is the same as any other part. Even so, all those varying parts are organized into the kind of form in which they act as a single whole, and each fits in directly or remotely with the activity of another. Seeing a form such as this in the human being, one may deduce what the form must be like in heaven, with which there is a correspondence - a most perfect one - of everything in the human being.