In general, men are driven by intellect and women by affections, and because of this men in the Bible generally represent knowledge and truth and women generally represent love and the desire for good. This generally carries over into marriage, where the man's growing knowledge and understanding and the woman's desire to be good and useful are a powerful combination. In many cases in the Bible, then, "husband" refers to things of truth and understanding, much as "man" does. Magnificent things can happen in a true marriage, though, when both partners are looking to the Lord. If a husband opens his heart to his wife, it's as though she can implant her loves inside him, transforming his intellectual urges into a love of growing wise. She in turn can grow in her love of that blooming wisdom, and use it for joy in their married life and in their caring for children and others in their life. Many couples, even in heaven, stay in that state -- called "Spiritual" -- growing deeper and deeper to eternity. There is the potential, though, for the couple to be transformed: through the nurturing love of his wife the husband can pass from a love of growing wise to an actual love of wisdom itself, and the wife can be transformed from the love of her husband's wisdom into the wisdom of that love -- the actual expression of the love of the Lord they have built together. In that state -- called "Celestial" -- the husband represents love and the desire for good, and the wife represents truth and knowledge.

4967. 'An Egyptian man' means natural truth. This is clear from the meaning of 'a man' as truth, dealt with in 3134, and from the meaning of 'Egypt' as factual knowledge in general, dealt with immediately above in 4964, 4966. And since 'Egypt' means factual knowledge it also means the natural, for all the factual knowledge present with a person constitutes his natural since it resides in his natural man, and includes knowledge about spiritual and heavenly realities. The reason for this is that the natural is the position within which and from which he sees those realities. Those which he does not see from that position are unintelligible to him. But a regenerate person, who is called spiritual, sees them in one way, an unregenerate person, who is called merely natural, in another. In the case of a regenerate person factual knowledge has the light of heaven shed upon it, but not so in the case of an unregenerate one. The light shed on the unregenerate person's factual knowledge comes by way of spirits governed by falsity and evil, a light which, it is true, begins as the light of heaven but among such spirits is reduced to a dim light like that of evening or night. Indeed spirits of this kind, and consequently men like them, see in the way owls do - clearly at night but dimly during the daytime. That is, they see falsities clearly and truths dimly, and therefore worldly things clearly but heavenly ones dimly, if at all. From this one may recognize that genuine factual knowledge is natural truth; for all genuine factual knowledge that is of the kind meant in the good sense by 'Egypt' is natural truth.