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:

10068. 'And over his sons and over the garments of his sons' means a reciprocal uniting of Divine Good and Divine Truth emanating from the Lord's Divine Human in the lower heavens. This is clear from the consideration that since the sprinkling of the blood taken from the altar and of the anointing oil over Aaron means the reciprocal uniting of Divine Good and Divine Truth emanating from the Lord's Divine Human in the higher heavens, 10067, a like sprinkling over Aaron's sons and their garments means a similar uniting in the lower heavens. For what is Divine and the Lord's in the lower heavens is represented by Aaron's sons when what is Divine and the Lord's in the higher heavens is represented by Aaron himself. The reason for this is that the lower heavens spring from the higher ones, like sons from their father, see 7004, 9468, 9473, 9680, 9683, 9780. It should be remembered that the Lord's celestial kingdom is meant by the higher heavens and His spiritual kingdom by the lower heavens, and that the heavens in both kingdoms are distinct and separate, as stated and shown many times. In each kingdom what is Divine and the Lord's is the same, yet different so far as reception by the angels there is concerned.