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Genesis 9

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1 And God blessed Noaḥ and his sons, and said to them, Be·​·fruitful, and multiply, and fill the earth.

2 And let the fear of you and the terror* of you be on every animal of the earth, and on every fowl of the heavens; to everything that the ground makes to creep forth, and to all the fish of the sea, into your hand let them be given.

3 Every creeping thing that lives shall be for you for food; as the green herb have I given it all to you.

4 Only the flesh with its soul, its blood, you shall not eat.

5 And surely your blood I will require of your souls; from the hand of every wild·​·animal I will require it; and from the hand of man, from the hand of a man his brother, I will require the soul of man.

6 Whoever sheds man’s blood in man*, his blood shall be shed; for in the image of God made He man.

7 And you, be· ye ·fruitful, and multiply; crawl forth on the earth, and multiply in it.

8 And God said to Noaḥ, and to his sons with him, saying,

9 And I, behold, I raise·​·up My covenant with you, and with your seed after you;

10 and with every living soul that is with you, even to the fowl, to the beast, and to every wild·​·animal of the land with you; of all that go·​·out of the ark, as·​·to every wild·​·animal of the land.

11 And I will raise·​·up my covenant with you; neither shall all flesh be cut·​·off any·​·more by the waters of the flood; neither shall there be any·​·more a flood to destroy the earth.

12 And God said, This is the sign of the covenant which I give between Me and you and every living soul that is with you, for the generations of an age;

13 I have put My bow in the cloud, and it shall be for a sign of a covenant between Me and the earth.

14 And it shall be, in clouding Myself with a cloud on the earth, that the bow shall be seen in the cloud,

15 and I will remember My covenant, which is between Me and you and every living soul among all flesh; and the waters shall no more be for a flood to destroy all flesh.

16 And the bow shall be in the cloud; and I will see it, to remember the eternal covenant between God and every living soul among all flesh that is upon the earth.

17 And God said to Noaḥ, This is the sign of the covenant which I have raised·​·up between Me and all flesh that is on the earth.

18 And the sons of Noaḥ, who went·​·out from the ark, were Shem, and Ham, and Japheth; and Ham, he is the father of Canaan.

19 These three were the sons of Noaḥ; and from these was scattered all the earth.

20 And Noaḥ began to be a man of the ground, and he planted a vineyard;

21 and he drank from the wine and was·​·drunken; and he was uncovered in the midst of his tent.

22 And Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father, and told his two brothers outside.

23 And Shem and Japheth took the raiment, and set it upon the shoulders of the two of them, and walked backward, and covered the nakedness of their father; and their faces were backward, and they saw not the nakedness of their father.

24 And Noaḥ awoke from his wine, and knew what his younger son had done to him.

25 And he said, Cursed be Canaan; a servant of servants shall he be to his brothers.

26 And he said, Blessed be Jehovah, the God of Shem; and Canaan shall be a servant to him.

27 May God enlarge Japheth, and he shall reside in the tents of Shem; and Canaan shall be a servant to him.

28 And Noaḥ lived after the flood three hundred years and fifty years.

29 And all the days of Noaḥ were nine hundred years and fifty years; and he died.

   


Thanks to the Kempton Project for the permission to use this New Church translation of the Word.

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Arcana Coelestia # 1093

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1093. That 'cursed be Canaan' means that external worship separated from internal turned itself away from the Lord is clear from the meaning of 'Canaan' and from the meaning of 'being cursed'. That 'Canaan' is external worship separated from internal is clear from what has been stated already about Canaan, also from his being called 'cursed'; and from what follows about his being 'a slave of slaves'. And being a slave both to Shem and to Japheth cannot mean anything other than something separated from the Church itself, such as worship that is wholly external. This is clear from the meaning of 'being cursed' as turning oneself away, for the Lord in no way curses anybody, or is even angry. Instead it is man who brings the curse upon himself by turning himself away from the Lord. On these points see what has been shown already in 223, 245, 592. The Lord is as far from cursing or being angry with anyone as the sky is from the earth. Who can believe that the Lord, who is all-knowing and all-powerful, who with wisdom rules the universe, and so who is infinitely superior to all [human] weaknesses, is angry with such pitifully worthless dust, that is, with human beings who scarcely know anything of what they do and who of themselves are incapable of anything other than evil? With the Lord therefore anger is never present, only mercy.

[2] That arcana are contained here can be seen merely from the consideration that even though it was Ham who saw his father's nakedness and pointed it out to his brothers, he was not cursed but his son Canaan, who was not his only son nor even the firstborn but the fourth in line, as is clear from Chapter 10, verse 6 later on, where the sons of Ham are mentioned as being Cush, Mizraim, Put, and Canaan. It can in addition be seen from the Divine Law that no son was to bear his father's iniquity, as is clear in Ezekiel,

The soul that has sinned will die. The son will not bear the iniquity of the father, nor will the father bear the iniquity of the son. Ezekiel 18:20; Deuteronomy 14:16; 2 Kings 14:6.

And the same can also be seen from the consideration that this iniquity of merely seeing his father's nakedness and pointing it out to his brothers seems too slight for all of his descendants ever to have been cursed on that account. From these considerations it is clear that arcana are contained here.

[3] The reason Ham is not mentioned here but Canaan is that Ham means faith separated from charity in the spiritual Church, which cannot be cursed because in that Church faith has holiness present within it because truth is present there. And although there is no faith when there is no charity, it is still possible - since it is by means of the cognitions of faith that a person is regenerated - for separated faith to be allied to charity, and in this way to be in some sense 'a brother' or may become one. This was why Canaan was cursed and not Ham. Furthermore the inhabitants of the land of Canaan were for the most part people such as made all worship consist in external things, the Jews there as much as the gentiles. These are the arcana contained here, but for which Canaan would never have been substituted for Ham. That external worship separated from internal turns itself away and so brings a curse on itself is quite clear from the fact that people whose worship is external have no regard for anything other than worldly, bodily, and earthly things. Thus they look downwards, and immerse their minds (animus) and life in those things; such will be dealt with a little further on.

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