44. Verses 24-25 And God said, Let the earth bring forth living creatures according to their kinds, beasts and creeping things and wild animals of the earth according to their kinds; and it was so. And God made wild animals of the earth according to their kinds, and beasts according to their kinds, and everything that creeps along the ground according to its kind; and God saw that it was good.

Man, like the earth, can produce nothing good unless the cognitions of faith have already been sown in him enabling him to know what to believe and do. It is the function of the understanding to hear the Word, and of the will to do it. A person who hears the Word and does not do it is one who claims to believe, but he does not live according to it. Such a person separates hearing and doing, and splits his mind in two directions; and by the Lord he is called 'a foolish man',

Everyone who hears My words and does them I liken to a wise man who built his house upon the rock; but everyone who hears My words and does them not I liken to a foolish man who built his house upon the sand. Matthew 7:24, 26.

Matters of the understanding, as has been shown, are meant by 'creeping things which the waters produce', and by 'birds over the earth and over the face ¹ of the expanse'. Matters of the will are here meant by 'living creatures which the earth brings forth', and by 'beasts and creeping things', and also by 'the wild animals of the earth'.

Footnotes:

9373. 'Come up to Jehovah' means being joined to the Lord. This is clear from the meaning of 'coming up' as being raised to more internal things, dealt with in 3084, 4539, 4969, 5406, 5817, 6007, and therefore also being joined to them, 8760. The reason why it is a joining to the Lord is that 'Jehovah' in the Word means the Lord, 1343, 1736, 1793, 2004, 2005, 2018, 2025, 2921, 3023, 3035, 5663, 6280, 6281, 6303, 6905, 8274, 8864, 9315. A further arcanum which lies concealed within the internal sense of these words is that the children of Jacob, over whom Moses presided as their head, were not called or elected; rather, they themselves insisted that Divine worship should be established among them, as accords with what has been stated in 4290, 4293. This is why it says, And He said to Moses, Come up to Jehovah, as though not Jehovah but another was telling him to go up. For the same reason it says in what follows that the people should not come up, verse 2, and that Jehovah did not lay a hand on the children of Israel who had been set apart, verse 11; also that the sight of Jehovah's glory was like a consuming fire on the top of the mountain in the eyes of the children of Israel, verse 17; and finally that Moses, when he was called on the seventh day, went into the middle of the cloud, [verses 16, 18.] 'The cloud' means the Word in the letter, 5922, 6343 (end), 6752, 6832, 8106, 8443, 8781; and among the children of Jacob it was the Word separated from its internal sense, since their worship was external devoid of anything internal. This becomes perfectly clear from the fact that they now said, as they had done before [at Exodus 19:8], All the words which Jehovah has spoken we will do, verse 3; yet scarcely forty days went by after this time and they were worshipping the golden calf instead of Jehovah. From this it is evident that such idolatry lay concealed in their heart when they said with their lips that they would serve Jehovah alone. However, the people who are meant by the called and the elect are those with whom internal worship exists, and also external worship springing from internal, that is, those with whom love to the Lord and faith in Him, and consequently love towards the neighbour are present.