The Bible

 

Genesis 2

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1 And the heavens and the earth and all their host were finished.

2 And God had finished on the seventh day his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made.

3 And God blessed the seventh day, and hallowed it, because that on it he rested from all his work which God had created in making it.

4 These are the histories of the heavens and the earth, when they were created, in the day that Jehovah Elohim made earth and heavens,

5 and every shrub of the field before it was in the earth, and every herb of the field before it grew; for Jehovah Elohim had not caused it to rain on the earth, and there was no man to till the ground.

6 But a mist went up from the earth, and moistened the whole surface of the ground.

7 And Jehovah Elohim formed Man, dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and Man became a living soul.

8 And Jehovah Elohim planted a garden in Eden eastward, and there put Man whom he had formed.

9 And out of the ground Jehovah Elohim made every tree grow that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; and the tree of life, in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

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

11 The name of the one is Pison: that is it which surrounds the whole land of Havilah, where the gold is.

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

13 And the name of the second river is Gihon: that is it which surrounds the whole land of Cush.

14 And the name of the third river is Hiddekel: that is it which flows forward toward Asshur. And the fourth river, that is Euphrates.

15 And Jehovah Elohim took Man, and put him into the garden of Eden, to till it and to guard it.

16 And Jehovah Elohim commanded Man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou shalt freely eat;

17 but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it; for in the day that thou eatest of it thou shalt certainly die.

18 And Jehovah Elohim said, It is not good that Man should be alone; I will make him a helpmate, his like.

19 And out of the ground Jehovah Elohim had formed every animal of the field and all fowl of the heavens, and brought [them] to Man, to see what he would call them; and whatever Man called each living soul, that was its name.

20 And Man gave names to all cattle, and to the fowl of the heavens, and to every beast of the field; but as for Adam, he found no helpmate, his like.

21 And Jehovah Elohim caused a deep sleep to fall upon Man; and he slept. And he took one of his ribs and closed up flesh in its stead.

22 And Jehovah Elohim built the rib that he had taken from Man into a woman; and brought her to Man.

23 And Man said, This time it is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh: this shall be called Woman, because this was taken out of a Man.

24 Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and cleave to his wife; and they shall become one flesh.

25 And they were both naked, Man and his wife, and were not ashamed.

   

From Swedenborg's Works

 

Arcana Coelestia #435

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435. As regards 'the man and his wife' here being used to mean the new Church which earlier on was meant by 'Adah and Zillah', this nobody can know or deduce from the sense of the letter, for previously 'the man (homo) and his wife' meant the Most Ancient Church and its descendants. The point is clear however from the internal sense, and also from the fact that a little further on, in verses 3-4 of the next chapter, reference is again made, though the wording is entirely different, to the man and his wife begetting Seth. At that point the first generation of the descendants of the Most Ancient Church is meant. Unless something different were meant at this point there would be no need to say the same thing again. A parallel to this exists in Chapter 1, where the subject is the creation of man, and also of the fruits of the earth, and of beasts; followed by Chapter 2, where similar events are described, the reason for the similarity being, as has been stated, that Chapter 1 deals with the creation of the spiritual man, Chapter 2 with the creation of the celestial man. When this kind of repetition of one and the same person or thing occurs, something different is meant on the first occasion from the second. But the exact meaning cannot possibly be known except from the internal sense. The actual train of thought in like manner establishes the meaning here. And there is the added consideration that 'man and wife' is a general expression meaning that Church, which is the subject here and from which the new Church was born.

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