73. Genesis 2
1. And the heavens and the earth were completed, and their whole army. 1
2. And on the seventh day God completed the work that he had done; and he rested on the seventh day from all the work that he had done.
3. And God blessed the seventh day and consecrated it, because on it he rested from all the work that he had done as God in creating it.
4. These are the births of the heavens and the earth when he created them, on the day on which he, Jehovah God, made the earth and the heavens.
5. And no shrub of the field was yet on the earth, and no plant of the field was yet sprouting, because Jehovah God had not made it rain on the earth. And there was no human to cultivate the ground.
6. And he made a mist rise up from the earth and watered the whole face of the ground.
7. And Jehovah God formed a human, dirt from the ground, and he breathed into the human's nostrils the breath of lives, 2 and the human was made into a living soul.
8. And Jehovah God planted a garden in Eden, on the east, and put in it the human whom he had formed.
9. And Jehovah God caused to sprout from the ground every tree desirable in appearance and good for food, and the tree of lives in the middle of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
10. And a river was going out from Eden to water the garden, and from there it parted and became four headwaters.
11. The name of the first is Pishon; it is circling the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold.
12. And the gold of that land is good; there is bdellium there, and shoham 3 stone.
13. And the name of the second river is Gihon; it is circling the whole land of Cush. 4
14. And the name of the third river is Hiddekel; 5 it goes east toward Assyria. And the fourth river is the Phrath. 6
15. And Jehovah God took the human and put the human in the Garden of Eden to cultivate it and to guard it.
16. And Jehovah God commanded the human concerning it, saying, "From every tree of the garden you definitely may eat.
17. But from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you may not eat, because on the day on which you eat from it you will surely die."
73. Summary
HAVING been changed from lifeless people to people focused on spirit, we are now changed from spiritual to heavenly; and heavenly people are the subject here (verse 1).
Fußnoten:
1. (in the text of Genesis 2:1). The word in Latin here translated "army" is exercitus, a rendition of the Hebrew צָבָא (ṣāḇā), whose plural, צְבָאוֹת (ṣǝḇā'ôṯ), is sometimes translated as "hosts." The idea is that the angels and stars constitute the "armies" of the Lord (Brown, Driver, and Briggs 1996, under צָבָא). See also note 1 in §119. [RS]
2. (in the text of Genesis 2:7). The unusual plurals in the phrase "breath of lives" here and "tree of lives" below in verse 9 are retained because they represent plurals in Swedenborg's Latin versions of these phrases, which are literal translations of the Hebrew. Swedenborg explains elsewhere that two lives are meant: the life of love and the life of faith (§304; see also §3623). On other unusual plurals in Swedenborg's Latin, see notes 2 in §6, 2 in §51 above. [LHC, GFD]
3. (in the text of Genesis 2:12). Swedenborg here transliterates the Hebrew word שֹׁהַם (šōham). The identification of the stone is uncertain. [LHC]
4. (in the text of Genesis 2:13). Some scholars agree with Swedenborg in identifying this Cush (or Kush) with Ethiopia (see §117), but the more literal-minded point out that Ethiopia is not circled by a river and lies far from the other rivers mentioned in this passage. There are other candidates, but the exact identification will probably remain uncertain. Whatever the quibbles of scholars, this Cush is subsumed into the symbolic complex that Swedenborg identifies with Ethiopia (see, for example, §1163). [SS]
5. (in the text of Genesis 2:14). The Hiddekel is the Tigris. [LHC]
6. (in the text of Genesis 2:14). The Phrath is the Euphrates. [LHC]
