The Bible

 

Genesis 3

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1 And the serpent was more crafty than any animal of the field which Jehovah Elohim had made. And it said to the woman, Is it even so, that God has said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?

2 And the woman said to the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden;

3 but of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, God has said, Ye shall not eat of it, and ye shall not touch it, lest ye die.

4 And the serpent said to the woman, Ye will not certainly die;

5 but God knows that in the day ye eat of it, your eyes will be opened, and ye will be as God, knowing good and evil.

6 And the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a pleasure for the eyes, and the tree was to be desired to give intelligence; and she took of its fruit, and ate, and gave also to her husband with her, and he ate.

7 And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked. And they sewed fig-leaves together, and made themselves aprons.

8 And they heard the voice of Jehovah Elohim, walking in the garden in the cool of the day. And Man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of Jehovah Elohim, in the midst of the trees of the garden.

9 And Jehovah Elohim called to Man, and said to him, Where art thou?

10 And he said, I heard thy voice in the garden, and I feared, because I am naked; and I hid myself.

11 And he said, Who told thee that thou art naked? Hast thou eaten of the tree of which I commanded thee not to eat?

12 And Man said, The woman, whom thou hast given [to be] with me, she gave me of the tree, and I ate.

13 And Jehovah Elohim said to the woman, What is this thou hast done? And the woman said, The serpent deceived me, and I ate.

14 And Jehovah Elohim said to the serpent, Because thou hast done this, be thou cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field. On thy belly shalt thou go, and eat dust all the days of thy life.

15 And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; he shall crush thy head, and thou shalt crush his heel.

16 To the woman he said, I will greatly increase thy travail and thy pregnancy; with pain thou shalt bear children; and to thy husband shall be thy desire, and he shall rule over thee.

17 And to Adam he said, Because thou hast hearkened to the voice of thy wife, and eaten of the tree of which I commanded thee saying, Thou shalt not eat of it: cursed be the ground on thy account; with toil shalt thou eat [of] it all the days of thy life;

18 and thorns and thistles shall it yield thee; and thou shalt eat the herb of the field.

19 In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, until thou return to the ground: for out of it wast thou taken. For dust thou art; and unto dust shalt thou return.

20 And Man called his wife's name Eve; because she is the mother of all living.

21 And Jehovah Elohim made Adam and his wife coats of skin, and clothed them.

22 And Jehovah Elohim said, Behold, Man is become as one of us, to know good and evil. And now, lest he stretch out his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever ...!

23 Therefore Jehovah Elohim sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from which he was taken.

24 And he drove out Man; and he set the Cherubim, and the flame of the flashing sword, toward the east of the garden of Eden, to guard the way to the tree of life.

   

From Swedenborg's Works

 

Arcana Coelestia #233

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233. Investigating mysteries of faith by means of facts is as impossible as it is for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, or for a rib to control the tiniest fibres of the chest and the heart. Just as gross, indeed far more gross, is what is sensory and factual in comparison with what is spiritual and celestial. Anyone who wishes to probe merely the secrets of nature, which are countless, discovers scarcely a single one, and when he starts to probe he sinks, as is well known, into falsities. What then would happen if he wished to probe the secrets of spiritual and celestial life, where thousands and thousands of secrets exist for each one contained in the unseen parts of nature?

[2] To illustrate the point, let just one example be taken. Of himself man is incapable of anything other than doing evil and turning himself away from the Lord. Yet it is not the man who does so but the evil spirits residing with him. Yet again it is not the evil spirits who do it but the evil itself which they have made their own. All the same, man does that evil and turns himself away, and is blameworthy, even though his life comes from the Lord alone. On the other hand man of himself cannot possibly do good and return to the Lord. This is accomplished by angels. Yet the angels cannot do it, but only the Lord. All the same, man is capable as if of himself of doing good and of returning to the Lord. The truth of all this cannot possibly be grasped by the senses, formulated knowledge, or philosophy. If these are consulted they deny those things outright, even though they are inherently true. And the same applies with everything else.

[3] These considerations show that people who consult sensory evidence and factual knowledge in matters of belief plunge themselves not only into doubt but also into denial, that is, into thick darkness. And in plunging into thick darkness they also become immersed in every kind of evil desire, for in believing what is false they also do what is false. And when they believe that the spiritual and the celestial do not exist they believe that only the bodily and the worldly do so. So they love anything that belongs to self and the world, and this is how evil desires and evils themselves arise out of what is false.

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