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Genesis 6

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1 And it cometh to pass that mankind have begun to multiply on the face of the ground, and daughters have been born to them,

2 and sons of God see the daughters of men that they [are] fair, and they take to themselves women of all whom they have chosen.

3 And Jehovah saith, `My Spirit doth not strive in man -- to the age; in their erring they [are] flesh:' and his days have been an hundred and twenty years.

4 The fallen ones were in the earth in those days, and even afterwards when sons of God come in unto daughters of men, and they have borne to them -- they [are] the heroes, who, from of old, [are] the men of name.

5 And Jehovah seeth that abundant [is] the wickedness of man in the earth, and every imagination of the thoughts of his heart only evil all the day;

6 and Jehovah repenteth that He hath made man in the earth, and He grieveth Himself -- unto His heart.

7 And Jehovah saith, `I wipe away man whom I have prepared from off the face of the ground, from man unto beast, unto creeping thing, and unto fowl of the heavens, for I have repented that I have made them.'

8 And Noah found grace in the eyes of Jehovah.

9 These [are] births of Noah: Noah [is] a righteous man; perfect he hath been among his generations; with God hath Noah walked habitually.

10 And Noah begetteth three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth.

11 And the earth is corrupt before God, and the earth is filled [with] violence.

12 And God seeth the earth, and lo, it hath been corrupted, for all flesh hath corrupted its way on the earth.

13 And God said to Noah, `An end of all flesh hath come before Me, for the earth hath been full of violence from their presence; and lo, I am destroying them with the earth.

14 `Make for thyself an ark of gopher-wood; rooms dost thou make with the ark, and thou hast covered it within and without with cypress;

15 and this [is] that which thou dost with it: three hundred cubits [is] the length of the ark, fifty cubits its breadth, and thirty cubits its height;

16 a window dost thou make for the ark, and unto a cubit thou dost restrain it from above; and the opening of the ark thou dost put in its side, -- lower, second, and third [stories] dost thou make it.

17 `And I, lo, I am bringing in the deluge of waters on the earth to destroy all flesh, in which [is] a living spirit, from under the heavens; all that [is] in the earth doth expire.

18 `And I have established My covenant with thee, and thou hast come in unto the ark, thou, and thy sons, and thy wife, and thy son's wives with thee;

19 and of all that liveth, of all flesh, two of every [sort] thou dost bring in unto the ark, to keep alive with thee; male and female are they.

20 Of the fowl after its kind, and of the cattle after their kind, of every creeping thing of the ground after its kind, two of every [sort] they come in unto thee, to keep alive.

21 `And thou, take to thyself of all food that is eaten; and thou hast gathered unto thyself, and it hath been to thee and to them for food.'

22 And Noah doth according to all that God hath commanded him; so hath he done.

   

Aus Swedenborgs Werken

 

Arcana Coelestia #639

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639. That 'the ark' means the member of this Church, or the Church called Noah, becomes sufficiently clear from the description of it below, and also from the fact that the Word of the Lord in every part embodies things that are spiritual and celestial, that is, the Lord's Word is spiritual and celestial. If the ark and the covering of it with bitumen, its measurements, and its construction, and also the Flood, meant no more than what the letter declares there would be absolutely nothing spiritual and celestial about it. It would be mere history and of no more use to the human race than similar descriptions found in secular authors. Now because the Word of the Lord in every part contains and embodies within its bosom or inner recesses things that are spiritual and celestial it is quite clear that 'the ark' and everything said about the ark mean arcana which are as yet undisclosed.

[2] The same is meant elsewhere by, for example, the little ark in which Moses was hidden and which was placed in the reeds by the riverbank, Exodus 2:3; and the sacred Ark in the wilderness, constructed according to the design indicated to Moses on Mount Sinai, is an even more sublime example. Unless every single thing in this sacred Ark had been representative of the Lord and His kingdom, it would have been no more than a kind of idol, and the worship that took place would have been idolatrous. So too with Solomon's Temple. Of itself it was in no sense holy. Nor did the gold, silver, cedar, and stone there make it so, but the particular things represented by those materials. And similarly in the present context, unless the ark and the construction of it with all its details meant some arcanum of the Church, the Word would not be the Word of the Lord but some dead piece of literature such as that found among the works of any secular author. From this it is clear that 'the ark' means the member of the Church, or the Church called Noah.

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