39. Verse 20 And God said, Let the waters bring forth creeping things, living creatures; and let birds fly above the earth, upon the face ¹ of the expanse of the heavens.

After the great lights have been kindled and lodged in the internal man, from which the external man receives its light, a person starts to live for the first time. Till then he can hardly be said to have lived, for he had imagined that the good he had done he had done from himself, and the truth he had uttered he had spoken from himself. And since man functioning from himself is dead - there being nothing in him that is not evil and false - therefore whatever he brings forth from himself is not living. So true is this that of himself he is incapable of doing any good deed that is in itself good. The fact that man cannot begin to think about good or to will it, and so cannot do good, unless the Lord is the source, is clear to everyone from the doctrine of faith, for the Lord says in Matthew,

He who sows the good seed is the Son of Man. Matthew 13:37.

Nor can good come from anywhere else than the one fount itself of all good, as yet again He says,

Nobody is good but one, God. Luke 18:19.

[2] Nevertheless when the Lord is revitalizing a person, or regenerating him, He does allow him, to begin with, to imagine that good and truth originate in himself, for at that point a person cannot grasp anything else, or be led to believe and finally perceive, that all good and truth come from the Lord alone. As long as he held the former opinion his truths and goods were comparable to 'a tender plant', then 'a plant bearing seed', and after that 'a fruit tree', which are inanimate. But once he has been brought to life by love and faith and believes that the Lord is at work in every good deed he does and in every truth he utters, he is compared first to creeping things from the water and to birds which fly above the earth, and then to beasts, all of which are animate and are called 'living creatures'.

脚注:

2145. 'He was sitting at the tent door' means the holiness which existed with Him at that time, namely the holiness of love, which is meant by 'as the day was getting warmer', dealt with in what follows next. This is clear from the meaning of 'a tent' as holiness, dealt with in 414, 1102, 1566. And for the reason why 'tents' meant forms of holiness, see the same paragraphs. Since the Lord at this time had the perception meant by the oak-groves of Mamre, which is a lower rational perception, yet more interior than that meant by the oak-grove of Moreh, dealt with in 1442, 1443, it is here represented and so is meant by his sitting at the tent door, that is, at the entrance to holiness. As regards perceptions being more interior or less interior, this may be illustrated from the perceptions which the most ancient people had. From these people I have heard that the more they were immersed in mere facts acquired from the objects of hearing and sight the lower their perceptions became; but the more they were raised up from them towards the celestial things of charity and love the more interior these perceptions became, as they were then closer to the Lord.