The Bible

 

Genesis 1:18

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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.

Commentary

 

Green

  
by Danielle Schnarr

The color green is almost exclusively used in connection with plants in the Bible, and the meaning is closely connected to the meaning of plants as well. Plants, in general, represent facts, knowledge that we can gather from the world. Green plants are ones that are alive and growing. Since life represents love and goodness, it makes sense that green plants are facts that have the potential for good use. It also indicates that they are the kinds of things we learn through directly through our senses, since to identify green plants we need to actually see the greenness.

(References: Apocalypse Explained 507; Apocalypse Revealed 426; Arcana Coelestia 7691)

From Swedenborg's Works

 

The New Jerusalem and its Heavenly Teachings #13

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13. The divine design calls for goodness and truth to be joined together and not separated-to be one, then, and not two. They are together as they emanate from the Lord and they are together in heaven, so they need to be joined to each other in the church.

In heaven, the joining of what is good and what is true is called "the heavenly marriage" because everyone there participates in this marriage. That is why heaven is compared to a marriage in the Word and why the Lord is called the Bridegroom and the Husband, while heaven is called the bride and the wife, as is the church. 1 The reason heaven and the church are so called is that the people there are receptive to the divine goodness that is present within truths.

Footnotes:

1. For passages containing this marital imagery, see, for example, Matthew 9:15, John 3:29, and Revelation 21:2, 9. [GFD]

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