1411. 'Go away from your land' means the bodily and worldly things from which He was to depart. This is clear from the meaning of 'land', which is varied depending on the person or thing to which it refers, as also in Genesis 1 where 'land', or 'earth', likewise meant the external man, and elsewhere, 82, 620, 636, 913. The reason why here it means bodily and worldly things is that these belong to the external man. 'Land' in the proper sense is a land itself, region, or kingdom; also the one who inhabits it, as well as its people, and the nation that is there. Thus the word 'land' not only means in a broad sense the people or nation but also in a narrower sense the inhabitant. When land is used with reference to the inhabitant the meaning is in accordance with the real things involved in such a reference; in this case bodily and worldly things are involved, because the land of his birth from which Abram was to go was idolatrous. Thus in the historical sense the meaning here is that Abram was to go away from that land, but in the representative sense that the Lord was to depart from the things belonging to the external man, that is, that external things should not get in the way or cause disturbance, and, since the Lord is the subject, that External things should accord with Internal.

913. 'Let them spread out into the earth' means the action of the internal man into the external, while 'be fruitful' means increases in good, 'and multiply' increases in truth, and 'over the earth' means with the external man. This is clear from the train of thought and also from what has been stated and shown already about the meaning in the Word of 'being fruitful' as having reference to goods, and of 'multiplying' to truths. That 'the earth' means the external man has in like manner been shown already, so there is no need to pause and confirm these points. Here the subject is the action of the internal man into the external after a person has been regenerated. That is to say, when good starts 'to be fruitful' and truth 'to multiply', the external man is rendered correspondent or obedient. Until then this is not possible because the desires of the body are incompatible with goods, and the illusions of the senses with truths. The former annihilate the love of good, the latter the love of truth. The fruitfulness of good and the multiplication of truth take place in the external man - the fruitfulness of good in his affections, the multiplication of truth in his memory. The external man is here called 'the earth' into which mankind spreads out and over which they are fruitful and multiply.