618. 'Noah was righteous and blameless', 'he walked with God', and now here 'he beget three sons', are statements in which the verbs are all in the past tense, even though they in fact have regard to things that were yet to be. It should be recognized that the internal sense is such that it carries no temporal connotations, a feature to which the original language also lends itself. Sometimes one and the same word there can apply to past, present, or future time, without using different words. In this way interior things come out more clearly into the open. That language derives this characteristic from the internal sense which is more manifold than anyone would ever credit. For this reason it does not allow itself to be limited by temporal connotations and distinctions.