Библијата

 

Genesis 1

Студија

1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

2 And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.

3 And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.

4 And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.

5 And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first Day.

6 And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.

7 And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so.

8 And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day.

9 And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so.

10 And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas: and God saw that it was good.

11 And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so.

12 And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind: and God saw that it was good.

13 And the evening and the morning were the third day.

14 And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years:

15 And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was so.

16 And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also.

17 And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth,

18 And to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness: and God saw that it was good.

19 And the evening and the morning were the fourth day.

20 And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven.

21 And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind: and God saw that it was good.

22 And God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply in the earth.

23 And the evening and the morning were the fifth day.

24 And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so.

25 And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that it was good.

26 And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.

27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.

28 And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.

29 And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat.

30 And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for meat: and it was so.

31 And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day.

Од делата на Сведенборг

 

Arcana Coelestia #904

Проучи го овој пасус

  
/ 10837  
  

904. That 'God spoke to Noah' means the Lord's presence with the member of the Church becomes clear from the internal sense of the Word. The Lord speaks to everybody, for whatever good and truth a person wills and thinks comes from the Lord. With everyone there are at least two evil spirits and two angels. The former activate his evils whereas the latter instill goods and truths. Every good or truth that angels instill is the Lord's; in this way the Lord is constantly speaking to man, though quite differently from one person to the next. To people who allow themselves to be carried away by evil spirits the Lord speaks as though He were not present, or so far away that He can hardly be said to be speaking. But to those who are being led by the Lord, the Lord speaks as one who is quite present. This becomes clear enough from the fact that nobody can possibly think of anything good and true except from the Lord.

[2] The Lord's presence is relative to the state of love towards the neighbour and of faith present in a person. It is in love towards the neighbour that the Lord is present, for He is present in all good, and not so much in so-called faith that is devoid of love. Faith devoid of love and charity is something severed or disjoined. Wherever conjunction exists there has to be a conjoining agency, which is exclusively love and charity. This may become clear to anyone from the fact that the Lord has compassion on everybody, loves everyone, and wishes to make everyone eternally happy. A person therefore who is devoid of the kind of love that leads him to have compassion on others, to love them, and to wish to make them happy, cannot be joined to the Lord because he is not at all like Him, and is in no sense the image of Him. Looking to the Lord by means of that which goes by the name of faith while hating the neighbour amounts not only to standing a long way off, but also to having between himself and the Lord a hell-like chasm into which the person would fall if he wished to go any nearer. For it is hatred towards the neighbour that constitutes that intervening hell-like chasm.

[3] The Lord is present with a person the moment he starts to love the neighbour. It is in love that the Lord is present, and to the extent that a person has love the Lord is present. And to the extent that the Lord is present He speaks to man. No one knows anything other than that he thinks from himself. Yet he possesses not one single idea of thought, not even the shred of an idea, from himself. Rather that which is evil and false he possesses through evil spirits from hell, and that which is good and true through angels from the Lord. Such is influx, the channel by which a person's life comes and by which consequently his soul interacts with the body. All these considerations make clear what 'God spoke to Noah' means. 'Saying to someone' means one thing, as in Genesis 1:29; 3:13-14, 17; 4:6, 9, 15; 6:13; 7:1, while 'speaking to someone' means another. Here speaking to Noah' means His being present, for the subject now is the regenerate person, who has had charity conferred on him.

  
/ 10837  
  

Thanks to the Swedenborg Society for the permission to use this translation.

Од делата на Сведенборг

 

Arcana Coelestia #6849

Проучи го овој пасус

  
/ 10837  
  

6849. 'For he was afraid to look at God' means for fear that they should suffer harm from the presence of the Divine itself. This is clear from the meaning of 'being afraid' as for fear that they, interior things, should suffer harm (for this was the reason for his fear); and from the meaning of 'looking at God' as the presence of the Divine itself. For the only way in which the Lord can make Himself present before a person is through the persons inner seeing, through seeing Him with the eye of faith that belongs to charity. If the Lord does manifest Himself in an outward visible form to someone, it is still the inner levels of mind that are affected, for the Divine reaches into the deepest parts of him. With regard to the meaning here, that interior things should not suffer harm from the presence of the Divine itself, and that therefore they were to be protected, the situation is this: The Divine itself is pure love, and pure love is like a fire hotter than the fire of the sun in this world. Consequently if Divine Love in its purity were to flow into any angel, spirit, or man, he would be completely destroyed, which is why so many times in the Word Jehovah or the Lord is called a consuming fire. To ensure therefore that the angels in heaven suffer no harm from the flow of heat from the Lord as the sun, each of them is veiled with a kind of thin cloud suited to the individual, which moderates the heat flowing in from that sun.

[2] The truth that without this form of preservation everyone would be destroyed by the presence of the Divine had been well known to the ancients, which was why they were afraid of seeing God, as is clear in the Book of Judges,

Gideon saw that he was the angel of Jehovah, therefore Gideon said, O Lord Jehovah! Inasmuch as I have seen the angel of Jehovah face to face. And Jehovah said to him, Peace be to you; do not fear, for you will not die. Judges 6:12, 23.

In the same book,

Manoah said to his wife, We shall surely die, for we have seen God. Judges 13:22.

And in the Book of Exodus,

Jehovah said to Moses, You cannot see My face, for no man will see My face and live. Exodus 33:20.

[3] When therefore Moses was allowed to see God, he was placed in a cleft of the rock, Exodus 33:22, which represented the dimness of his faith, and the clouds that hid and protected him. How dangerous it can be for angels to be beheld by the Divine without being covered by a cloud is made very clear by the fact that when angels look at any spirit who is governed by evil he seems to change into something resembling a lifeless object, as I have often been allowed to see. The reason why this happens is that when the angels look at someone there is cast in his direction the light and heat of heaven, and the truth of faith and the good of love with them, which - when these penetrate - virtually deprive the evil of life.

[4] If this is what happens when angels look at them, what would happen if the Lord did so? This explains why the hells are utterly remote from heaven, and why those who are there wish to be remote, for if they are not they suffer dreadful torment. This makes plain the meaning of the following words, They will say to the mountains and rocks, Rush down on us and hide us from the face of Him who is seated on the throne. Revelation 6:16; Luke 23:30; Hosea 10:8.

[5] Thus the presence of the Divine itself is such that no angel can bear it unless he is protected by a cloud which tempers and moderates the rays of light and the heat from that sun. From this one may recognize plainly that the Lord's Human is Divine, for if it were not Divine it could never have become so united to the Divine itself, called the Father, that they are one, according to the Lord's words in John 14:10 and following verses, and elsewhere. For that which is to receive the Divine in this way must be wholly Divine; what was not Divine from such a union would be plainly reduced to nothing. Let me use a comparison. Can anything be thrown into the fire of the sun and not be destroyed, unless it is similar in nature to the sun? So, can anyone enter the intense heat of infinite love unless he has in him the heat of the same kind of love, consequently unless he is none other than the Lord? The truth that the Father is within Him and that the Father does not show Himself except within His Divine Human is clear from the Lord's words in John,

Nobody has ever seen God; the only begotten Son who is in the bosom of the Father, He has made Him known. John 1:18.

And elsewhere in the same gospel,

You have never heard His voice nor seen His shape. John 5:37.

  
/ 10837  
  

Thanks to the Swedenborg Society for the permission to use this translation.