8942. 'For if you move your chisel over it' means if a product of the proprium or self. This is clear from the meaning of 'chisel' as counterfeit truth, thus a product of the self. For a chisel is a piece of iron used to carve and shape figures out of stones, and therefore the human self is meant here since this shapes things which are to compose religion, to make them look like the truth. Instead of the word 'chisel' some places elsewhere have '[a piece of] iron', while others elsewhere have 'axe', as in Deuteronomy 27:5; Joshua 8:30-31; 1 Kings 6:7; Isaiah 44:10-12; Hosea 13:2; Jeremiah 10:3-4; and these tools mean such things as are implements of self-intelligence used for fabrication.

5871. 'Make every man go out from me' means that incompatible and contradictory factual knowledge was to be cast away from the centre. This is clear from the meaning of 'every man from him' as factual knowledge, for the men were Egyptians, and by 'Egyptians' is meant factual knowledge, see 1164, 1165, 1186, 1462, 5700, 5702; and since it was cast aside it follows that it was incompatible and contradictory. For the situation is this: When the truths present in the external or natural man become joined to the good present in the internal man - that is, when the truths of faith are joined to the good of charity - all factual knowledge which is incompatible, and especially that which is contradictory, is cast away from the centre to the sides, thus from the light in the centre to the shadowy parts at the sides. When this happens that knowledge is in part disregarded and in part treated as valueless. But from the remaining factual knowledge which is compatible and harmonious, a kind of extraction - or if one can use the expression, a kind of distillation - takes place, from which the inner meaning of things is obtained, a meaning that no one perceives while in the body except through some joyful feeling, like that experienced at daybreak. Such is the way in which the joining of the truth of faith to the good of charity is effected.