97. The nature of the earliest church provides yet another reason for the use of breathing and breath as depictions of a life force. The people of that church could perceive the quality of love and faith in others from the quality of their breathing — a quality that gradually changed over the generations. Nothing can be said about this kind of respiration any longer, since time has buried any knowledge of it. 1 The earliest people knew all about it, and people in the next life do too, but no one left on the globe today does.
In consequence, people of the earliest church used wind as a metaphor for spirit or life. So does the Lord when he speaks of our regeneration in John:
The spirit [wind] 2 blows where it wishes, and you hear its voice but do not know where it may be coming from or where it may be going; this is the way with everyone who is born from the spirit. (John 3:8)
David has something similar:
By Jehovah's word were the heavens made, and by the spirit [wind] of his mouth, the whole army of them. (Psalms 33:6)
And again:
You gather their spirit, they pass away and return to their dust; you send your spirit out, they continue to be created, and you renew the face of the ground. (Psalms 104:29-30)
It can be seen in Job that breath stands for the vital quality of faith and love:
There is a spirit in humankind, and the breath of Shaddai 3 makes them understand. (Job 32:8)
Again:
The spirit of God made me, and the breath of Shaddai gave me life. (Job 33:4)
Bilješke:
1. Swedenborg himself experienced changes in respiration that he associated with altered states of consciousness. He remarks that even as a child he had been accustomed to exercise what he called "inner respiration" while praying (Spiritual Experiences [Swedenborg 1998-2002] §§3320, 3464). When as a mature man he wrote in a state of inspiration, he found his breath would almost stop (Spiritual Experiences [Swedenborg 1998-2002] §3320). [RS]
2. The parenthetical interpolations of the word "wind" here and in the quotation from Psalms 33:6 below are Swedenborg's. [LHC]
3. Shaddai (שַׁדַּי [šaddai]) is a name for God, already archaic by the time the Hebrew Scriptures were written. The etymology and meaning are unknown, but it is often translated as "Almighty." Recent scholarship suggests that it comes from a Semitic root meaning "mountain;" thus Shaddai may mean "the mountain [god]" (Cross 1973, 52-55). Swedenborg discusses the name at length in §1992. [LHC, RS]
