Genesi 6:9
To many Protestant and Evangelical Italians, the Bibles translated by Giovanni Diodati are an important part of their history. Diodati’s first Italian Bible edition was printed in 1607, and his second in 1641. He died in 1649. Throughout the 1800s two editions of Diodati’s text were printed by the British Foreign Bible Society. This is the more recent 1894 edition, translated by Claudiana.
Arcana Coelestia # 649
649. But here the numbers or measures of the ark signify nothing else than the remains which were with the man of this church when he was being reformed, and that they were but few. This is evident from the fact that in these numbers five predominates, which in the Word signifies some or a little, as in Isaiah:
There shall be left therein gleanings, as the shaking of an olive tree, two or three berries in the top of the uppermost bough, four or five in the branches of a fruitful one (Isaiah 17:6),
where “two or three” and “five” denote a few. Again:
One thousand at the rebuke of one; at the rebuke of five shall ye flee; until ye be left as a pole upon the top of a mountain (Isaiah 30:17),where also “five” denotes a few. So too the least fine, after restitution, was a “fifth part” (Leviticus 5:16; 6:5; 22:14; Numbers 5:7). And the least addition when they redeemed a beast, a house, a field, or the tithes, was a “fifth part” (Leviticus 27:13, 15, 19, 31).
