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Genesis 3

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1 Now the snake was wiser than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And he said to the woman, Has God truly said that you may not take of the fruit of any tree in the garden?

2 And the woman said, We may take of the fruit of the trees in the garden:

3 But of the fruit of the tree in the middle of the garden, God has said, If you take of it or put your hands on it, death will come to you.

4 And the snake said, Death will not certainly come to you:

5 For God sees that on the day when you take of its fruit, your eyes will be open, and you will be as gods, having knowledge of good and evil.

6 And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and a delight to the eyes, and to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit, and gave it to her husband.

7 And their eyes were open and they were conscious that they had no clothing and they made themselves coats of leaves stitched together.

8 And there came to them the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the evening wind: and the man and his wife went to a secret place among the trees of the garden, away from the eyes of the Lord God.

9 And the voice of the Lord God came to the man, saying, Where are you?

10 And he said, Hearing your voice in the garden I was full of fear, because I was without clothing: and I kept myself from your eyes.

11 And he said, Who gave you the knowledge that you were without clothing? Have you taken of the fruit of the tree which I said you were not to take?

12 And the man said, The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me the fruit of the tree and I took it.

13 And the Lord God said to the woman, What have you done? And the woman said, I was tricked by the deceit of the snake and I took it.

14 And the Lord God said to the snake, Because you have done this you are cursed more than all cattle and every beast of the field; you will go flat on the earth, and dust will be your food all the days of your life:

15 And there will be war between you and the woman and between your seed and her seed: by him will your head be crushed and by you his foot will be wounded.

16 To the woman he said, Great will be your pain in childbirth; in sorrow will your children come to birth; still your desire will be for your husband, but he will be your master.

17 And to Adam he said, Because you gave ear to the voice of your wife and took of the fruit of the tree which I said you were not to take, the earth is cursed on your account; in pain you will get your food from it all your life.

18 Thorns and waste plants will come up, and the plants of the field will be your food;

19 With the hard work of your hands you will get your bread till you go back to the earth from which you were taken: for dust you are and to the dust you will go back.

20 And the man gave his wife the name of Eve because she was the mother of all who have life.

21 And the Lord God made for Adam and for his wife coats of skins for their clothing.

22 And the Lord God said, Now the man has become like one of us, having knowledge of good and evil; and now if he puts out his hand and takes of the fruit of the tree of life, he will go on living for ever.

23 So the Lord God sent him out of the garden of Eden to be a worker on the earth from which he was taken.

24 So he sent the man out; and at the east of the garden of Eden he put winged ones and a flaming sword turning every way to keep the way to the tree of life.

   

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Arcana Coelestia # 303

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303. Man makes a life for himself out of all his convictions, that is, out of what he acknowledges and believes. The things of which he is not convinced, that is, which he does not acknowledge and believe, have no influence at all on his mind. Consequently nobody is capable of profaning holy things except him who has been convinced of them and so acknowledges them and yet denies them. People who do not acknowledge are capable of knowing, but they are in the same position as those who do not know. They are like people who know things which are nothing at all. Of such a nature were the Jews around the time of the Lord's Coming. And when people are such they are in the Word called 'vastated', that is, faith no longer exists. That being so, no harm is done if the inner contents of the Word are disclosed to them, for they are in that case like the people who seeing do not see, and like the people who hearing do not hear and who have a heart made fat, to whom the Lord referred through Isaiah,

Go and say to this people, Hearing hear, but do not understand; and seeing see, but do not comprehend. Make the heart of this people fat and their ears heavy, and plaster over their eyes, lest they see with their eyes and hear with their ears, and their heart understands, and they turn again to be healed. Isaiah 6:9-10.

[2] Furthermore mysteries of faith are not disclosed until people reach this point, that is to say, have been so vastated that they no longer believe, the purpose of the vastation being, as has been stated, to make them incapable of profaning. This too the Lord states plainly in Isaiah in the verses immediately following those quoted above,

I said, How long, O Lord? And He said, Until cities are made so desolate that they have no inhabitant, and houses have no man; and the land will be made utterly desolate, and Jehovah will remove man far away. Isaiah 6:11-12.

'Man' refers to the person who is wise, that is, who acknowledges and believes. Such was the condition of the Jews, as has been stated, around the time of the Lord's Coming. And they are for the same reason still kept by means of their desires, in particular by their avarice, in such a state of vastation that if they heard a thousand times over about the Lord and heard that in every detail the representatives of the Church with them mean the Lord, they would still acknowledge and believe nothing. This then was the reason why the people before the Flood were expelled from the garden of Eden and were vastated, even to the point of their being incapable of acknowledging anything that was true.

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