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Genesis 9

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1 And God blessed Noah and his sons, and said to them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth.

2 And the fear of you and the dread of you shall be upon every beast of the earth, and upon every fowl of the air, upon all that moveth on the earth, and upon all the fishes of the sea; into your hand are they delivered.

3 Every moving thing that liveth shall be food for you; even as the green herb have I given you all things:

4 But flesh with the life of it, which is its blood, shall ye not eat.

5 And surely your blood of your lives will I require: at the hand of every beast will I require it: and at the hand of man, at the hand of every man's brother will I require the life of man.

6 Whoever sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed: for in the image of God made he man.

7 And you, be ye fruitful, and multiply, bring forth abundantly in the earth, and multiply therein.

8 And God spoke to Noah, and to his sons with him, saying,

9 And I, behold, I establish my covenant with you, and with your seed after you;

10 And with every living creature that is with you, of the fowl, of the cattle, and of every beast of the earth with you, from all that go out of the ark, to every beast of the earth.

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

12 And God said, This is the token of the covenant which I make between me and you and every living creature that is with you, for perpetual generations.

13 I do set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be for a token of a covenant between me and the earth.

14 And it shall come to pass, when I bring a cloud over 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 creature of all flesh; and the waters shall no more become a flood to destroy all flesh.

16 And the bow shall be in the cloud; and I will look upon it, that I may remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is upon the earth.

17 And God said to Noah, This is the token of the covenant which I have established between me and all flesh that is upon the earth.

18 And the sons of Noah that went forth from the ark, were Shem, and Ham, and Japheth: and Ham was the father of Canaan.

19 These three were the sons of Noah: and from them was the whole earth overspread.

20 And Noah began to be a husbandman, and he planted a vineyard:

21 And he drank the wine, and was drunken, and he was uncovered within his tent.

22 And Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father, and told his two brethren without.

23 And Shem and Japheth took a garment, and laid it upon both their shoulders, and went backward, and covered the nakedness of their father: and their faces were backward, and they saw not their father's nakedness.

24 And Noah 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 brethren.

26 And he said, Blessed be the LORD God of Shem; and Canaan shall be his servant.

27 God shall enlarge Japheth, and he shall dwell in the tents of Shem; and Canaan shall be his servant.

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

29 And all the days of Noah were nine hundred and fifty years: and he died.

   

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Arcana Coelestia # 981

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981. That 'God blessed' means the Lord's presence and grace is clear from the meaning of 'blessing'. In the Word, in the external sense, 'blessing' means being enriched with all earthly and bodily good. This is also how all people who keep to the external sense explain the Word, as Jews did in the past, and still do so today, and also as Christians do, especially at the present time. Consequently they have focused the Divine blessing, and still do, on wealth, on having plenty of everything, and on personal glory. But in the internal sense 'blessing' means being enriched with all spiritual and celestial good, a blessing which neither does nor can possibly exist unless it comes from the Lord. This is why 'blessing' means the Lord's presence and grace. The Lord's presence and grace carry such blessing within them. The expression 'presence' is used because the Lord is present only in charity, and the subject at this point is the regenerate spiritual man who acts from charity. The Lord is present with everyone, but as is a person's distance from charity, so is the degree of the Lord's presence, or so is He, let me say, more absent, that is, the Lord is more remote.

[2] The reason the expression grace and not mercy is used - a reason, I presume, that has remained unknown up to now - is that celestial people do not talk of grace but of mercy, while spiritual people talk not of mercy but of grace. This difference has its origins in the fact that celestial people acknowledge that the human race is wholly unclean, and in itself excrementitious and hellish, on account of which they plead for the Lord's mercy - mercy being the appropriate word for people in this condition.

[3] Spiritual people however, though they are aware that the human condition is such, do not acknowledge it, for they still remain in, and love, their proprium; and therefore they find it difficult to make mention of mercy but easy to do so of grace. It is the different kind of humility existing with each that produces this verbal difference. The more anyone loves himself and imagines that he is able to do good of himself and so merit salvation, the less he is able to plead for the Lord's mercy. The reason some [are able to plead] for grace at all is that it has become a commonplace expression. When used however it contains little that is the Lord's and much that is a person's own. This anyone can discover in himself when he uses the expression 'the grace of the Lord'.

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