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.

2729. The derivation of genuine conjugial love from good married to truth may also be evident from the fact that it cannot exist with anyone unless good united to truth and truth to good from the Lord are present in him. That derivation may also be evident from the fact that heavenly blessedness and happiness reside in that love, and that everyone in whom that love exists comes into heaven, that is, into the heavenly marriage. It is also evident from the fact that when angels are talking about the union of good and truth, that which is a representative of marriage presents itself in a lower sphere among good spirits, but that which is a representative of adultery presents itself among evil spirits. This explains why in the Word the union of good and truth is called a marriage, but the adulteration of good and the falsification of truth is called adultery and whoredom, see 2466.