3583. 'And your mother's sons will bow down to you' means over all other affections for truth. This is clear from the meaning of 'sons' also as truths, dealt with in 489, 491, 533, 1147, 2623, 3373, and from the meaning of 'mother' as the affection for spiritual truth - therefore as the Church, for the Church exists from truth and the affection for this, and is given the name 'mother', dealt with in 289, 2691, 2717.

533. Since nothing further is mentioned about Lamech apart from the fact that be beget sons and daughters, who are the conceptions and births of such a Church, there is no need to pause any longer over him. What these births, or sons and daughters, were, becomes clear from the Church, for the character of a Church determines that of its offspring. Both those Churches called Methuselah and Lamech breathed their last just before the flood.