5225. 'And there was no one to interpret them for Pharaoh' means that no knowledge existed of what was going to happen. This is clear from the meaning of 'interpreting' as knowing what was going to happen, dealt with in 5141, and therefore 'no one to interpret' means no knowledge of it since 'no one' in the internal sense means the absence and so non-existence of some reality. For the idea of a person is converted in the internal sense into that of some reality. For example, the idea of a man, husband, woman, wife, son, daughter, boy, or virgin is converted into the idea of some truth or form of good. Or, as above in 5223, the idea of a magus and a wise man is converted into that of factual knowledge, interior and exterior. The reason for this is that in the spiritual world, that is, in heaven, angels' attention is fixed not on persons but on spiritual realities. For persons narrow an idea down and focus it on some finite thing, whereas spiritual realities do not involve any such narrowing down or focusing but spread to what is Infinite, and so to the Lord. This explains too why in heaven no one ever perceives a person mentioned in the Word; instead they perceive the reality represented by that person. Nor for the same reason does anyone in heaven perceive a people or nation, only its essential nature. Indeed in heaven they have no knowledge at all of any historical detail in the Word about any person, nation, or people; consequently they have no knowledge of who Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, or the people of Israel are, nor of who the Jewish people are. Instead they perceive what is represented by Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, the people of Israel, the Jewish people, and so on with everything else. This explains why angelic language has no limitations and is also a universal one compared with other languages.

5141. 'That he had interpreted what was good' means what was going to take place. This is clear from the meaning of 'interpreting' as what it held within itself, or what lay within it, dealt with above in 5093, 5105, 5107, 5121, and thus also what was going to take place. The discernment that what was good was going to take place was a sensory discernment which, compared with other kinds of discernment, is an obscure one. To be exact, there is the power of discernment exercised by the senses or the exterior natural; the power of discernment exercised by the interior natural; and the power of discernment exercised by the rational. When a person is led by affection to think on a more interior level and to divorce his mind from what his senses and his body tell him, his discernment is of the rational kind. For in his case lower ideas, that is, those conceived by his external man, become dormant, and that person is virtually in his spirit. But when, for reasons that arise in the world, his thought exists on a more exterior level his power of discernment is that exercised by the interior natural. The rational is, it is true, exerting an influence, but not with any living affection. When however a person is engrossed in mere pleasures and the delights engendered by a love of the world, and also by self-love, his power of discernment is that exercised by the senses. His life in this case is focused on external interests or the body, and he has no room for anything internal apart from what will prevent him from breaking out into shameful and unseemly kinds of behaviour. But the more external his discernment is, the more obscure it is; for in relation to interior things exterior ones are general. Countless details that are interior manifest themselves in that which is exterior as one simple whole.