49. Verse 26 And God said, Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; and they will have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, ¹ and over the beasts, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.

To people in the Most Ancient Church with whom the Lord spoke face to face, the Lord appeared as Man. (Much can be told about those people, but this is not the time to do so.) For this reason they called nobody man except the Lord and whatever may have been His. They did not even call themselves man, but only the things which they perceived that they had from the Lord, such as every good stemming from love and every truth of faith. These things were said to be human because they were the Lord's.

[2] In the Prophets therefore, in the highest sense, 'man' and 'son of man' are used to mean the Lord. In the internal sense they are used to mean wisdom and intelligence, and so everyone who is regenerate, as in Jeremiah,

I looked to the earth, and behold, a void and an emptiness, and towards the heavens, and behold, they had no light. I looked, and behold there was no man; and all the birds of the air ¹ had fled. Jeremiah 4:23, 25.

In Isaiah where in the internal sense 'man' means a regenerate person, the Lord Himself as the One Man is meant in the highest sense,

Thus said Jehovah, the Holy One of Israel, and He who formed him, It was I that made the earth and it was I that created man upon it; My hands stretched out the heavens, and I commanded all their host. Isaiah 45:11-13

[3] The Lord was therefore seen by the Prophets as Man, for example by Ezekiel,

Above the firmament in appearance like a sapphire stone there was the likeness of a throne, and above the likeness of a throne, there was a likeness, as the appearance of a Man upon it above. Ezekiel 1:26.

And the One whom Daniel saw was called 'a Son of Man', or what amounts to the same, Man,

I looked, and behold, with the clouds of heaven One like the Son of Man was coming; and He came even to the Ancient of Days, and they brought Him near before Him. And to Him was given dominion and glory and kingdom; and all peoples, nations, and languages will serve Him. His dominion is the dominion of an age, which will not pass away, and His kingdom one that will not perish. Daniel 7:13-14.

[4] Moreover the Lord quite often calls Himself the Son of Man or Man, and, as is done in Daniel, foretells His entry into glory,

They will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and glory. Matthew 24:23, 30.

The literal sense of the Word is called 'the clouds of heaven', its internal sense 'power and glory'. The internal sense, in every single detail, focuses exclusively on the Lord and His kingdom. Consequently it is the spiritual sense which contains power and glory.

Footnotes:

640. That 'planks of gopher' means lusts, and that 'rooms' means the two parts of this man - that of the will and that of the understanding - nobody as yet knows. Neither can anyone see in what way they possess such meanings unless it is stated beforehand what the situation was with that Church. As stated quite often, it was from love that the Most Ancient Church knew anything that was a matter of faith, or what amounts to the same, it was from a will for good that it possessed its understanding of truth. But their descendants by heredity also derived a condition in which evil desires belonging to the will prevailed with them, desires in which they also immersed doctrinal matters concerning faith, and as a consequence became the Nephilim. When therefore the Lord foresaw that mankind would perish eternally if it continued in such a condition, He made provision for the will part to be separated from the understanding part, and for man to be formed, not as he had been formed previously by a will for good, but by having charity conferred on him through the understanding of truth, such charity looking very much like the will for good. This new Church called Noah came to be of such a nature, and so was of an entirely different disposition from the Most Ancient Church. In addition to this Church others also existed at that time, such as the one called Enosh dealt with already at Chapter 4:25, 26, and others again of which no such mention or description has come down to us. Only the Church of Noah is described here because it was altogether different in disposition from the Most Ancient Church.