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Genesis 3

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1 Now the serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field which Jehovah God had made. And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of any tree of the garden?

2 And the woman said unto the serpent, Of the fruit of the trees of the garden we may eat:

3 but of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die.

4 And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die:

5 for God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as God, knowing good and evil.

6 And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat; and she gave also unto her husband with her, and he did eat.

7 And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig-leaves together, and made themselves aprons.

8 And they heard the voice of Jehovah God walking in the garden in the cool of the day: and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of Jehovah God amongst the trees of the garden.

9 And Jehovah God called unto the man, and said unto him, Where art thou?

10 And he said, I heard thy voice in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself.

11 And he said, Who told thee that thou wast naked? Hast thou eaten of the tree, whereof I commanded thee that thou shouldest not eat?

12 And the man said, The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat.

13 And Jehovah God said unto the woman, What is this thou hast done? And the woman said, The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat.

14 And Jehovah God said unto the serpent, Because thou hast done this, cursed art thou above all cattle, and above every beast of the field; upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life:

15 and I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed: he shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.

16 Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy pain and thy conception; in pain thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.

17 And unto Adam he said, Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it: cursed is the ground for thy sake; in toil shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life;

18 thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat the herb of the field;

19 in the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.

20 And the man called his wife's name Eve; because she was the mother of all living.

21 And Jehovah God made for Adam and for his wife coats of skins, and clothed them.

22 And Jehovah God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil; and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever-

23 therefore Jehovah God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from whence he was taken.

24 So he drove out the man; and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden the Cherubim, and the flame of a sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life.

   

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Divine Providence # 314

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314. We can tell what people who are deceived by their own intelligence are like if we look at what they imagine when deeper judgment is called for, what they imagine about inflow, for example, about thought, and about life.

When it comes to inflow, they think backwards. They think that our eyesight flows into the inner sight of our minds, our discernment, and that the hearing of our ears flows into our inner hearing, which is also our discernment. They do not see that our discernment is flowing from our volition into our eyes and ears and is not only making them sensitive but is using them as its instruments in the physical world. Since this is not the way things seem, they do not see it. Even if you tell them that the physical does not flow into the spiritual but the spiritual does flow into the physical, they will still think, "What is the spiritual except a purer form of the physical? If the eye sees something beautiful and the ear hears something harmonious, doesn't it seem as though the mind--which is discernment and volition--is pleased?" They do not realize that eyes do not see on their own, tongues do not taste on their own, noses do not smell on their own, and skins do not feel on their own. It is our mind or spirit that is sensing in those organs and is being affected by them according to its own nature; and even so, our mind or spirit is not sensing these things on its own, but from the Lord. Any other notion is based on appearances, and if they are accepted as true, it is based on illusions.

[2] As for thought, they say that it is some change effected in the air, varied according to the objects we perceive, and reinforced by habit. This means that the concepts of our thoughts are likenesses that we see in the air like phenomena in the sky, and that our memory is the slate on which they are recorded. They do not realize that our thoughts take place in substances that are intricately organized, just as our sight and hearing take place in their organs. They should look at the brain, and they would see a wealth of substances like this. Injure them and you go out of your mind; destroy them and you die. On the nature of thought and memory, see the end of 279 above.

[3] Their only concept of life is that it is something that nature does, something that makes itself felt in various ways, just as a living body moves itself organically. If you say that this means nature is alive, they deny it and say that nature only makes things live. If you ask them whether this means that life vanishes when the body dies, they answer that life remains in that bit of air called the soul. If you ask what God is in this case, whether he is life itself, they have no reply and do not want to express what they are actually thinking. If you ask whether they will agree that divine love and wisdom are life itself, they answer, "What is love? What is wisdom?" This is because they cannot see in their illusions what love and wisdom are or what God is.

I include this to show how we are deceived by our own prudence, since we base all our conclusions on appearances and therefore on illusions.

  
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Thanks to the Swedenborg Foundation for the permission to use this translation.