7999. That is bought with silver. That this signifies who has any spiritual truth, is evident from the signification of "buying," as being acquisition and appropriation (see n. 4397, 4487, 5374, 5397, 5406, 5410, 5426); and from the signification of "silver," as being truth (n. 1551, 2954, 5658), here spiritual truth, because the servant that is bought is in the internal sense the natural man, and therefore the lord who buys is the spiritual man. How this is cannot be known unless it is known how the spiritual buys for itself-that is, acquires and appropriates-the natural. When man is being regenerated, his internal and external, that is, the spiritual and the natural, at first are at variance, for the spiritual wills what is of heaven, but the natural what is of the world. But the spiritual then continually inflows into the natural and brings it into agreement; this is effected by means of truth; and what the spiritual brings to itself in the natural is called "bought with silver," that is, acquired and appropriated by means of truth.