42. Verse 21 And God created the great sea monsters, and every living creature that creeps, which the waters produced abundantly according to their kinds; and all winged birds according to their kinds; and God saw that it was good.

As has been stated, 'fish' means facts, here facts quickened and brought to life through faith from the Lord. 'Sea monsters' means those facts' general sources, below which and from which details derive. Nothing whatever exists in the universe that does not depend on some general source for its commencement and continuance. In the Prophets sea monsters or whales are mentioned several times, and in those places they mean those general sources of facts. Pharaoh, the king of Egypt, who represents human wisdom or intelligence - that is, knowledge in general - is called 'a great sea monster', as in Ezekiel,

Behold, I am against you, Pharaoh king of Egypt, the great monster lying in the midst of his ¹ rivers, who has said, It is my river and I have made myself. Ezekiel 29:3.

[2] And elsewhere in Ezekiel,

Raise a lamentation over Pharaoh, king of Egypt, and say to him, You are like a monster in the seas, and you have come forth in your rivers, and have troubled the waters with your feet. Ezekiel 32:2

These words mean people who wish to penetrate the mysteries that are part of faith by means of facts, and so from themselves. In Isaiah,

On that day Jehovah will make a visitation with His hard and great and strong sword upon Leviathan the full-length serpent, ² and upon Leviathan the twisting serpent, and He will slay the monsters that are in the sea. Isaiah 27:1.

'Slaying the monsters in the sea' means preventing people's knowing facts even in their general aspects. In Jeremiah,

Nebuchadnezzar king of Babel has devoured me, he has troubled me, he has made me an empty vessel, he has swallowed me up like a sea monster, he has filled his belly with my delicacies, he has cast me out. Jeremiah 51:34.

This stands for the fact that mankind did swallow cognitions of faith, which are 'the delicacies' here, just as the sea monster swallowed up Jonah. In that story the sea monster stands for people who treat general cognitions of faith as mere facts, and behave accordingly.

Notas a pie de página:

3513. 'And I will eat' means in that way making it its own. This is clear from the meaning of 'eating' as being made one's own, dealt with in 2187, 2343, 3168, 3503. It is made its own when, by means of forms of pleasantness and delight, truths, that is, cognitions of good and truth, are instilled into the natural; and when these truths are allied to the good in the natural, communication is effected with the truth and good of the rational and so with the rational itself. It is this communication that the expression 'being made one's own' is used to describe, for those truths belong to the rational within the natural. Indeed truths in the rational are related to those in the natural in the way that individual parts are related to their general wholes. It is well known that a general whole is the product of its individual parts and that without the individual parts no general whole can be produced. It is the general whole produced from the individual parts belonging to the rational that is manifested in the natural. And being a general whole it takes a different form, doing so according to the order of the individual constituent parts, and so according to the form that results. If it is the more specific and the consequent individual parts of celestial good and spiritual truth that give form to the general whole within the natural, then it is a celestial and spiritual form that is presented, and something of heaven is represented as a kind of image in the specific parts constituting the general whole. But if the more specific and the individual parts which give form to the general whole within the natural do not consist of good and truth but of evil and falsity, something of hell is in that case represented as a kind of image in the specific parts constituting the general whole.

[2] Such are the things meant by eating and drinking in the Holy Supper, where again eating and drinking mean making one's own; that is to say, 'eating' means making good one's own and 'drinking' making truth one's own. If good, that is to say, love to the Lord and charity towards the neighbour, gives form to the internal or rational man, and by way of this rational man gives form to a corresponding external or natural man, the person becomes in particular and in general an image of heaven, and therefore an image of the Lord. But if contempt for the Lord and for the good and truth of faith, and hatred towards the neighbour give form to the rational man, the person becomes in particular and in general an image of hell - the more so if at the same time he eats and drinks in a holy manner, for profanation then results. Consequently people who eat and drink worthily make eternal life their own, whereas those who do so unworthily make [eternal] death their own.