193. (viii) A woman is really formed into a wife [for her husband] as described in Genesis. In this book it is said that woman was created from man's rib, and that the man said when she was brought to him, 'She is bone from my bones and flesh from my flesh; and she shall be called Ishshah, because she was taken from Ish (man)' Gen. 2:22-24. In the spiritual sense of the Word the rib of the chest means nothing but natural truth. This is the meaning of the ribs which a bear had in its teeth (Dan. 7:5), for bears mean those who read the Word in its natural sense and see the truths in it without understanding them. A man's chest, by which* it is distinguished from a woman's chest, means the essential and the self. This is his wisdom (see 187 above), for truth supports wisdom, just as a rib supports the chest. They have these meanings because the chest is the part in which a person's whole being is centred.
[2] These facts establish that woman was created out of man by copying his own wisdom, that is, out of natural truth; and that the love of this is transferred from the man to the woman, so as to become conjugial love. This happens to prevent the man being filled with self-love, but rather with the love of his wife. Her innate character cannot fail to convert the self-love a man feels into a love for her. I have been told that this results from the wife's love without either the man or his wife being aware of it. That is why truly conjugial love can never be found in anyone who is moved by self-love to feel pride in his own intelligence.
[3] Once this mystery of woman being created from man is understood, it can be seen that a woman is likewise, as it were, created or formed from the man in marriage; this is brought about by the wife, or rather by the Lord through the wife, since it is the Lord who imparts to women the inclination to act thus. For a wife takes upon herself an image of the man by making his affections her own (see 183 above), and by linking the man's inner will with hers, on which see below. It also happens by her taking to herself what is propagated by his soul; on which also see below. These remarks make it plain that a woman, according to the description in Genesis understood inwardly, is formed into a wife by what she takes from her husband and from his chest, and copies into herself. * Reading quo for quod.
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