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Genesis 2

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1 And the heaven and the earth and all things in them were complete.

2 And on the seventh day God came to the end of all his work; and on the seventh day he took his rest from all the work which he had done.

3 And God gave his blessing to the seventh day and made it holy: because on that day he took his rest from all the work which he had made and done.

4 These are the generations of the heaven and the earth when they were made.

5 In the day when the Lord God made earth and heaven there were no plants of the field on the earth, and no grass had come up: for the Lord God had not sent rain on the earth and there was no man to do work on the land.

6 But a mist went up from the earth, watering all the face of the land.

7 And the Lord God made man from the dust of the earth, breathing into him the breath of life: and man became a living soul.

8 And the Lord God made a garden in the east, in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had made.

9 And out of the earth the Lord made every tree to come, delighting the eye and good for food; and in the middle of the garden, the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

10 And a river went out of Eden giving water to the garden; and from there it was parted and became four streams.

11 The name of the first is Pishon, which goes round about all the land of Havilah where there is gold.

12 And the gold of that land is good: there is bdellium and the onyx stone.

13 And the name of the second river is Gihon: this river goes round all the land of Cush.

14 And the name of the third river is Tigris, which goes to the east of Assyria. And the fourth river is Euphrates.

15 And the Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to do work in it and take care of it.

16 And the Lord God gave the man orders, saying, You may freely take of the fruit of every tree of the garden:

17 But of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you may not take; for on the day when you take of it, death will certainly come to you.

18 And the Lord God said, It is not good for the man to be by himself: I will make one like himself as a help to him

19 And from the earth the Lord God made every beast of the field and every bird of the air, and took them to the man to see what names he would give them: and whatever name he gave to any living thing, that was its name.

20 And the man gave names to all cattle and to the birds of the air and to every beast of the field; but Adam had no one like himself as a help.

21 And the Lord God sent a deep sleep on the man, and took one of the bones from his side while he was sleeping, joining up the flesh again in its place:

22 And the bone which the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman, and took her to the man.

23 And the man said, This is now bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh: let her name be Woman because she was taken out of man.

24 For this cause will a man go away from his father and his mother and be joined to his wife; and they will be one flesh.

25 And the man and his wife were without clothing, and they had no sense of shame.

   

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True Christian Religion # 364

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364. (i) The Lord flows into every human being with all His Divine love, all His Divine wisdom, and so with all His Divine life.

We read in the Book of Creation that man was created an image of God, and God breathed into his nostrils the breath of life (Genesis 1:27; 2:7). This description means that he is an organ of life, not life itself. For God could not have created another like Himself; if He could have done so, there would be as many gods as there are people. Nor could He create life, just as neither can light be created. But He could create man to be a form for life to act on, just as He created the eye to be a form for light to act on. Nor could God, nor can He, divide His essence, since it is one and indivisible. So since God alone is life, it follows indubitably that God uses His own life to give life to every human being. Without that quickening man would be as regards flesh nothing but a sponge, and as regards bones nothing but a skeleton, no more alive than a clock, which is kept running by a pendulum together with a weight or a spring. Since this is so, it also follows that God flows in with every person with all His Divine life, that is, with all His Divine love and Divine wisdom. These two make up His Divine life (39-40 above); for the Divine cannot be divided.

[2] However, the manner in which God flows in with all His Divine life can be grasped as somewhat resembling the way the sun of the world flows in with all its essence, which is heat and light, into every tree, into every shrub and flower, into every stone, ordinary as well as precious, so that each single object draws its ration from this common inflow; but the sun does not split up its light and heat, giving part to this object and part to that. It is much the same with the sun of heaven, which radiates Divine love as heat and Divine wisdom as light. These two flow into human minds, just as the heat and light of the sun of the world flow into human bodies, giving them life depending on the nature of their form; the form of each takes from the common inflow what it needs. The following saying of the Lord can be applied to this:

Your Father makes His sun rise upon the wicked and the good, and sends rain upon the righteous and the unrighteous, Matthew 5:45.

[3] Also, the Lord is omnipresent, and where He is present, there He is with His whole essence. It is impossible for Him to take anything away from that essence, so as to give a part to one and another part to another, but He gives it in its entirety, enabling a person to take a little or much. He says too that He has His dwelling with those who keep His commandments, and that the faithful are in Him and He is in them. In short, everything is full of God, and from that fulness each takes his own share. Everything held in common is like this, for instance, the atmospheres or the oceans. The atmosphere is the same on the smallest as it is on the largest scale. It does not assign a part of itself to a person's breathing, to a bird's flying, or to the sails of a ship, or the sails of a wind-mill; but each takes from it its own portion and uses for itself as much as is enough. It is also similar with a granary full of wheat; the owner each day takes from it his own rations, and it is not the granary that distributes them.

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