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Genesis 2

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1 And the heaven and the earth and all things in them were complete.

2 And on the seventh day God came to the end of all his work; and on the seventh day he took his rest from all the work which he had done.

3 And God gave his blessing to the seventh day and made it holy: because on that day he took his rest from all the work which he had made and done.

4 These are the generations of the heaven and the earth when they were made.

5 In the day when the Lord God made earth and heaven there were no plants of the field on the earth, and no grass had come up: for the Lord God had not sent rain on the earth and there was no man to do work on the land.

6 But a mist went up from the earth, watering all the face of the land.

7 And the Lord God made man from the dust of the earth, breathing into him the breath of life: and man became a living soul.

8 And the Lord God made a garden in the east, in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had made.

9 And out of the earth the Lord made every tree to come, delighting the eye and good for food; and in the middle of the garden, the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

10 And a river went out of Eden giving water to the garden; and from there it was parted and became four streams.

11 The name of the first is Pishon, which goes round about all the land of Havilah where there is gold.

12 And the gold of that land is good: there is bdellium and the onyx stone.

13 And the name of the second river is Gihon: this river goes round all the land of Cush.

14 And the name of the third river is Tigris, which goes to the east of Assyria. And the fourth river is Euphrates.

15 And the Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to do work in it and take care of it.

16 And the Lord God gave the man orders, saying, You may freely take of the fruit of every tree of the garden:

17 But of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you may not take; for on the day when you take of it, death will certainly come to you.

18 And the Lord God said, It is not good for the man to be by himself: I will make one like himself as a help to him

19 And from the earth the Lord God made every beast of the field and every bird of the air, and took them to the man to see what names he would give them: and whatever name he gave to any living thing, that was its name.

20 And the man gave names to all cattle and to the birds of the air and to every beast of the field; but Adam had no one like himself as a help.

21 And the Lord God sent a deep sleep on the man, and took one of the bones from his side while he was sleeping, joining up the flesh again in its place:

22 And the bone which the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman, and took her to the man.

23 And the man said, This is now bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh: let her name be Woman because she was taken out of man.

24 For this cause will a man go away from his father and his mother and be joined to his wife; and they will be one flesh.

25 And the man and his wife were without clothing, and they had no sense of shame.

   

From Swedenborg's Works

 

Arcana Coelestia #8286

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8286. 'And with the wind of Your nostrils the waters were heaped up' means falsities gathered together through heaven's presence. This is clear from the meaning of 'the wind of Your nostrils' as heaven, dealt with below; from the meaning of 'being heaped up' as being gathered into one; and from the meaning of 'the waters' as falsities, dealt with in 7307, 8137, 8138. Damnation and being cast into hell involves having all the falsities arising from evil gathered together, and then being hemmed in by them, see 8146, 8210, 8232; and this happens as a result simply of the Lord's presence, 8265. The reason why 'the wind of Jehovah's, or the Lord's, nostrils' means heaven is that the expression is used to denote the breath of life, that is, God's life; and since God's life constitutes heaven's life, heaven is meant by 'the wind of Jehovah's nostrils'. This also explains why the same word in the original language means both wind and spirit.

[2] The fact that Jehovah's wind or His breath means heaven's life, and the life of a person in heaven, that is, of one who has been regenerated, is clear in David,

By the Word of Jehovah were the heavens made, and all their host by the spirit (wind) of His mouth. Psalms 33:6.

In the same author,

You gather up their spirit, they breathe their last and fall back into their dust. You send forth Your spirit (wind), they are created. Psalms 104:29-30.

In Ezekiel,

Jehovah said to me, Will these bones live? Then He said, Prophesy over the spirit, prophesy, O son of man, and say to the wind, Thus said the Lord Jehovih, Come from the four winds, O spirit, and breathe into these killed, that they may live. And the spirit came into them, and they lived again. Ezekiel 37:3, 9-10.

In John,

I saw four angels standing over the four corners of the earth, holding back the four winds of the earth, in order that the wind should not blow onto the earth, nor onto the sea, nor onto any tree. Revelation 7:1.

Here 'the wind' stands for heaven's life, which is God's life, as also in Job,

The spirit of God has made me, and the breath of Shaddai 1 has given me life. Job 33:4.

[3] Since 'wind' meant life the Lord also says, in His teaching about a person's regeneration,

The spirit (or wind) blows where it wishes, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or goes away to; so it is with everyone who has been born from the spirit. John 3:8.

And since life from God was meant by 'Jehovah's wind' or 'His breath' it therefore says of Jehovah, when Adam's new life is the subject, that

He breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul. Genesis 2:7.

The word 'nostrils' is used because a person breathes by means of them and by means of breathing has life, as in Isaiah,

Turn yourselves away from the person in whose nostrils there is breath. 2 Isaiah 2:22.

In Jeremiah,

The Breath 3 Lamentations 4:20Job 27:3.

[4] Since therefore 'the wind of Jehovah's nostrils' means life which comes from the Lord, and so in the universal sense means heaven, and since through the Lord's presence - or through the presence of heaven, where the Lord is - evils and falsities are cast into hell, 8265, so also is the accomplishment of this meant by 'the wind of Jehovah's nostrils', as in David,

The channels of the sea were seen, the foundations of the world were revealed, because of Jehovah's rebuke, at the blast of breath from His nostrils. 4 Psalms 18:8, 15; 2 Samuel 22:16. 5

In Isaiah,

The breath of Jehovah like a stream 6 of brimstone sets it alight. Isaiah 30:33.

In the same prophet,

Indeed they are not planted, indeed they are not sown, indeed their trunk does not take root in the earth, and also He breathes onto them and they wither, so that the whirlwind may bear them away like stubble. Isaiah 40:24Psalms 147:1718

In addition this explains why 'the nose', when used in reference to Jehovah or the Lord, also means wrath, and so the punishment, vastation, and damnation suffered by those ruled by evils and falsities, as in Numbers 25:4; Deuteronomy 7:4; Judges 2:14; Isaiah 9:12; Jeremiah 4:8Hosea 14:4; Psalms 6:1; 86:15; 103:8; 145:8; and very many other times elsewhere. It explains too why 'breathing with the nostrils' or 'breathing out' means being angry, Deuteronomy 4:21; Isaiah 12:1; Psalms 2:12; 6:1; 60:1; 79:5; 85:5.

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