42. Verse 21 And God created the great sea monsters, and every living creature that creeps, which the waters produced abundantly according to their kinds; and all winged birds according to their kinds; and God saw that it was good.

As has been stated, 'fish' means facts, here facts quickened and brought to life through faith from the Lord. 'Sea monsters' means those facts' general sources, below which and from which details derive. Nothing whatever exists in the universe that does not depend on some general source for its commencement and continuance. In the Prophets sea monsters or whales are mentioned several times, and in those places they mean those general sources of facts. Pharaoh, the king of Egypt, who represents human wisdom or intelligence - that is, knowledge in general - is called 'a great sea monster', as in Ezekiel,

Behold, I am against you, Pharaoh king of Egypt, the great monster lying in the midst of his ¹ rivers, who has said, It is my river and I have made myself. Ezekiel 29:3.

[2] And elsewhere in Ezekiel,

Raise a lamentation over Pharaoh, king of Egypt, and say to him, You are like a monster in the seas, and you have come forth in your rivers, and have troubled the waters with your feet. Ezekiel 32:2

These words mean people who wish to penetrate the mysteries that are part of faith by means of facts, and so from themselves. In Isaiah,

On that day Jehovah will make a visitation with His hard and great and strong sword upon Leviathan the full-length serpent, ² and upon Leviathan the twisting serpent, and He will slay the monsters that are in the sea. Isaiah 27:1.

'Slaying the monsters in the sea' means preventing people's knowing facts even in their general aspects. In Jeremiah,

Nebuchadnezzar king of Babel has devoured me, he has troubled me, he has made me an empty vessel, he has swallowed me up like a sea monster, he has filled his belly with my delicacies, he has cast me out. Jeremiah 51:34.

This stands for the fact that mankind did swallow cognitions of faith, which are 'the delicacies' here, just as the sea monster swallowed up Jonah. In that story the sea monster stands for people who treat general cognitions of faith as mere facts, and behave accordingly.

Footnotes:

1860. That 'there was thick darkness' means when hatred existed in place of charity is clear from the meaning of 'thick darkness'. In the Word 'darkness' means falsities, while 'thick darkness' means evils, as explained immediately below. 'Darkness' is when falsity exists in place of truth, and 'thick darkness' when evil exists in place of good, or what amounts entirely to the same, when hatred exists in place of charity. When hatred exists in place of charity the darkness is so thick that the person is not even aware of its being an evil, let alone of its being so great an evil as to thrust him down in the next life into hell; indeed people who are steeped in hatred find a certain delight and so to speak life in it. This very delight and life have the effect that he hardly knows other than that hatred is good. Whatever favors a person's pleasure and desire, because it favors his love, he feels as good - so much so that when he is told it is of hell he can hardly believe it. Even less can he believe it when he is told that such delight and life is converted in the next life into an utterly foul and corpse-like stench. Even less still can he believe that he is becoming a devil and a dreadful replica of hell; for hell consists of nothing else than varieties of hatred and other such forms.

[2] But of this anyone may know who has any power of thought; for if he were to describe hatred, or to represent it, or to portray it if he were able to in any way, he would not do so except by the use of devil-like forms such as these persons steeped in evil also assume after death. And what is extraordinary, such people can still declare that in the next life they will go to heaven, in some cases for merely saying that they have faith - though in fact the only forms occurring in heaven are those of charity, the nature of which may be seen in what has been told from experience in 553. Let those people now consider how these two forms - of hatred and of charity - can be in agreement in the same place.

[3] That 'darkness' means falsity and 'thick darkness' evil becomes clear from the following places in the Word: In Isaiah,

Behold, darkness is covering the earth, and thick darkness the peoples. Isaiah 60:2.

In Joel,

Let all the inhabitants of the earth tremble, for the day of Jehovah is coming, a day of darkness and thick darkness. Joel 2:1-2.

In Zephaniah,

A day of wrath is that day, a day of vastation and desolation, a day of darkness and thick darkness. Zephaniah 1:15.

In Amos,

Is not the day of Jehovah darkness and not light, and thick darkness, and no brightness in it? Amos 5:20.

In these places 'the day of Jehovah' stands for the final period of the Church, which is also the subject here. 'Darkness' stands for falsities, 'thick darkness' for evils; hence both are mentioned. Otherwise there would be a repetition of the same thing, or a pointless excess of words. The term used in the original language however to express thick darkness in this verse embodies both within itself - falsity as well as evil, or gross falsity that produces evil, as well as gross evil that produces falsity.