6742. 'And the girl went and called the child's mother' means that the Church's truth of good linked things of the Church to it. This is clear from the meaning of 'the girl' as the Church's truth of good, dealt with below; from the meaning of 'calling' as linking, for the reason why she called the mother was in order to link her; and from the meaning of 'the mother' as the Church, dealt with in 289, 2691, 2717, 5581, and so also as things of the Church. In the Word the expression 'virgin' is used; so also is 'girl', though the word rendered 'girl' here rarely occurs in the original language. 'Virgin' means the good that the celestial Church possesses, whereas 'girl' means the truth of good that the spiritual Church possesses, as in David,

They have seen Your goings, O God, the goings of my God, my King, in the sanctuary. The singers went before, players [of stringed instruments] after, in the midst of the girls playing timbrels. Psalms 68:24-25.

The words in these verses all have reference to the truths of good that the spiritual Church possesses. The expression 'God' is used when truth is the subject, see 2769, 2807, 2822, 4402; 'king' means truth, 1672, 2015, 2069, 3009, 4575, 4581, 4966, 5044, 5068, 6148; 'singers' has reference to truths that the spiritual Church possesses, 418-420, and 'timbrel players' has reference to spiritual good, 4138. From this one may see that 'the girls' are the truths of good which the spiritual Church possesses.

2691. 'God heard the boy's voice' means help at that point. This is clear from the meaning in the internal sense of 'God hearing the voice 'the words used in the historical sense - as bringing help, and from the meaning of 'the boy' as spiritual truth, dealt with already. Here a state is meant in which the spiritual as regards truth existed, for it is said that 'He heard the boy's voice' and soon after in this verse that 'He heard the boy's voice where he was', that is to say, where he was as to state. And, in the explanations of the verses immediately before, this state was shown to be one of utmost grief because truth had been taken away. The reason it was the boy's voice, not Hagar's, that God is said to have heard is that the state of the spiritual man is the subject. 'The boy', or Ishmael, represents the member of the spiritual Church, 'Hagar his mother' the affection for cognitions of truth, it being within this affection that the grief was felt. Man's rational is born from the affection for factual knowledge as a mother, 1895, 1896, 1902, 1910, 2094, 2524, but his spiritual is born from the affection for cognitions of truth acquired from doctrine, chiefly from the Word. Here the spiritual itself is 'the boy', and the affection for cognitions of truth is 'Hagar'.