The Bible

 

Genesis 1

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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.

From Swedenborg's Works

 

Divine Love and Wisdom #287

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287. We can also tell that love and wisdom are human by looking at heaven's angels, who are people in full beauty to the extent that they are caught up in love, and therefore in wisdom, from the Lord. The same conclusion follows from what it says in the Word about Adam's being created in the image and likeness of God (Genesis 1:26), because he was created in the form of love and wisdom.

All earthly individuals are born in the human form as to their physical bodies. This is because our spirit, which is also called our soul, is a person; and it is a person because it is receptive of love and wisdom from the Lord. To the extent that our spirit or soul actually accepts love and wisdom, we become human after the death of these material bodies that we are carrying around. To the extent that we do not accept love and wisdom we become grotesque creatures, retaining some trace of humanity because of our ability to accept them.

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

From Swedenborg's Works

 

Arcana Coelestia #5614

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5614. 'We would by now have returned these two times' means that spiritual life, exterior and interior, [would have been restored]. This is clear from the meaning of 'going' as living, dealt with above in 5605, and therefore 'going back' is a subsequent phase of living (for they went to Egypt to acquire grain for themselves, and 'grain' means the good of truth that is the product of spiritual life); and from the meaning of 'these two times', since this has reference to life, as exterior life and interior life. The corn which they received the first time meant exterior life, which is life in the natural, for the reason, dealt with in the previous chapter, that they did not have the intermediary with them. But the grain which they receive this time means interior life, for now they did have Benjamin, who is the intermediary, with them, this being the subject in the present chapter and the next one. All this explains why 'we would by now have returned these two times' means spiritual life, exterior and interior.

[2] It is bound to seem strange that these things are meant, especially to someone who has no knowledge of what is spiritual; for it seems as though 'returning these two times' does not have the vaguest connection with what is actually meant, namely spiritual life. But this really is the inner meaning of these words. Indeed - if you are willing to believe it - that spiritual meaning is what the interior thought of a person moved by good comprehends, for that interior thought exists on the same level as the internal sense, though the person himself is totally ignorant of this while he lives in the body. For the internal or spiritual sense, which exists on the level of his interior thought, comes down without him knowing it into material ideas formed by his senses. These ideas rely for their formation on time and space and on the kinds of things that exist in the world, so that it is not evident to him that his interior thought is of such a nature. His interior thought is by nature the same as that of the angels, for his spirit dwells in communion with them.

[3] The fact that the thought of a person moved by good accords with the internal sense may be recognized from the consideration that when he enters heaven after death he knows that internal sense without ever at all having to learn about it, which would by no means be possible if in the world his interior thought had not existed on the same level as that sense. It exists on the same level because of the correspondence between spiritual things and natural ones, the nature of which is such that not even the smallest thing is without correspondence. Therefore since the interior or rational mind of a person moved by good is in the spiritual world and his exterior or natural mind is in the natural world, both of these parts of his mind inevitably engage in thought. But his interior mind thinks on a spiritual level, his exterior mind on a natural level; also what is spiritual comes down into what is natural, and then through correspondence the two act as one.

[4] A person's interior mind, in which the ideas constituting the thought there are called intellectual concepts and are referred to as immaterial ideas, does not rely, when it is engaged in thought, on verbal expressions belonging to any language. Consequently it does not rely on any natural forms. This may be recognized by anyone who is able to stop and reflect on these matters; for he can in an instant see in his mind what he can hardly express verbally in an hour, by the use of general observations which include very many details. The ideas constituting his thought are spiritual ones and are no different in nature, when the Word is read, from the spiritual sense. Even so, that person is quite unaware of this, for the reason already stated that those spiritual ideas flow into the natural and present themselves within natural ideas. Thus those spiritual ideas are in apparent, so completely that unless a person has received instruction in the matter he imagines that the spiritual does not exist unless it is like the natural, indeed that he does not think within his spirit in any different way from that in which he speaks in the body. Such is the way that the natural conceals the spiritual.

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