2181. 'And gave it to the servant, and he hastened to make it ready' means the joining of this good to rational good, 'the servant' meaning the natural man. This is clear from the meaning of 'a servant' as one who ministers and administers. And that which is ministered or effected is the making ready of the young bull, by which natural good is meant, as has been shown. To perceive the implications of this more clearly one should recognize that there exists in every person an internal, a rational in a middle position, and a natural, and that these three are distinct and separate from one other, as dealt with in 1889, 1940. One should also recognize that these should be made to conform so that they make one, thus so that rational good conforms with natural good, and recognize that unless they do conform and so are joined together, there cannot be any Divine perception. Since the Lord's Divine Perception is the subject here, it is the conformity and conjunction of the two kinds of good that are meant in the internal sense by the words that appear here.

This can, of course, be a wonderful thing: It is essential for our journey to heaven, and is the reason for the holiness of marriage. But when the men represent falsity it can also be horrendously twisted, as in the attempted homosexual rape in Sodom (Genesis 19) and the rape of the concubine in Gibeah (Judges 19). In a general sense, men represent things of the intellect -- facts, ideas, knowledge, everything from the deepest truths to the most pernicious falsities about life and the Lord. Women in general represents things of affection -- desire, passion, caring, everything from the most exalted love for the Lord to the darkest hatred. When a man “knows” a woman in the Bible, then, it represents a joining together of those intellectual and affectionate faculties. “Know" is also often used in connection with virginity. A women who has “not known a man” represents the affection for truth, unsullied by falsity.