6383. 'Zebulun' means the dwelling together of goodness and truth. This is clear from the representation of 'Zebulun' as the heavenly marriage, dealt with in 3960, 3961, thus goodness and truth joined together, since that conjunction is the heavenly marriage. The words 'the dwelling together of goodness and truth' are used because in the original language 'Zebulun' means a dwelling together. Here 'Zebulun' has reference to those within the Church who use the facts they know to draw inferences about spiritual truths and thereby strengthen their grasp of those truths. But it should be recognized that 'Zebulun' does not mean those people who do not believe something unless they are shown factual and sensory evidence to prove it and who until then have a negative attitude of mind. Such people do not ever come to believe it because that negative attitude of mind reigns in all their thinking; and when it reigns in all their thinking, facts which contradict, not those that corroborate, enter in and are gathered up by those people. They cast aside facts that may serve to corroborate, or else interpret them in such a way that they lend support to other factual evidence that contradicts the truth. Thus the negative attitude becomes all the stronger.

[2] But 'Zebulun' is used here to mean people who believe teachings drawn from the Word and accordingly have something of an affirmative attitude in all their thinking. Yet their faith does not exist in truths but in factual knowledge, for they bring such knowledge to bear on those teachings and by doing this strengthen their affirmative attitude. The ones who are meant by 'Zebulun' do not therefore go above factual knowledge; rather, when they hear or contemplate any truth of faith they instantly fall back on the facts they know. Many in the world are like this; and the Lord even makes provision so that factual knowledge and sensory evidence may serve them to that end.

793. From this point onwards to the end of the present chapter the subject is the people before the Flood who perished. This becomes clear from the details in the description given. People who possess the internal sense can recognize instantly, and indeed from any single word, what the subject is, better still from the combination of many. When the subject changes different words instantly appear, or else the same words combined differently. The reason is that some words are peculiar to spiritual matters, others peculiar to celestial; or what amounts to the same, some are peculiar to things of the understanding, others to those of the will. For example, 'desolation' is a word used of spiritual things, 'vastation' of celestial; 'city' is used of spiritual, 'mountain' of celestial; and so on. The same applies to combinations of words. And what is bound to amaze everybody, the difference in Hebrew is frequently just a matter of vocalization. In what belongs to the class of spiritual words the first three vowels [of the alphabet] are normally prominent, but in the case of what is celestial the last two. The fact that these verses contain a different subject is also discernible from the repetition discussed already. That is to say, the statement, 'And the waters grew stronger and stronger over the earth', is a repetition of what has already been stated in the previous verse. It is also discernible from everything that follows.