The Inner Meaning of the Prophets and Psalms #150
150. Internal Meaning of Ezekiel, Chapter 27
1-2 Further concerning the church in respect to knowledges [cognitiones] of truth, which is Tyre. (2)
3-9 The Ancient Church had knowledges of truth and good of every kind and species, and by means of them it had intelligence. (2)
10-11 Truths that protected that church. (2)
12-13 Acquisitions and communications of all the knowledges. (2)
14-20 Knowledge [scientia], intelligence, and wisdom by means of them.
21-23 Divine worship from them. (2)
24-25 Truths and goods of every kind and thus everything of the church acquired by means of them. (2, 17)
26-29 Through natural knowledges [scientiae] they have perished. (2)
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.
