The Bible

 

Genesis 1:22

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22 And God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply in the earth.

From Swedenborg's Works

 

Arcana Coelestia #28

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28. Verse 10 And God called the dry land Earth, and the gathering together of the waters He called Seas; and God saw that it was good.

It is very common in the Word for 'waters' to mean cognitions and facts, and consequently for 'seas' to mean a gathering together of them, as in Isaiah,

The earth will be full of the knowledge of Jehovah as the waters covering the sea. Isaiah 11:9.

And in the same prophet, with reference to a lack of cognitions and facts,

The waters will dry up from the sea, the river will be parched and dry, and the streams will diminish. Isaiah 19:5-6.

In Haggai, with reference to a new Church,

I will shake the heavens and the earth, and the sea and the dry land; and I will shake all nations, and the desire of all nations will come, and I will fill this house with glory. Haggai 2:6-7.

And with reference to someone who is to be regenerated, in Zechariah,

There will be one day - it is known to Jehovah - not day and not night, for at evening time there will be light; and on that day living waters will flow out from Jerusalem, part of them to the eastern sea, and part of them to the western sea. Zechariah 14:7-8.

In David where the person is described who, having been vastated, is to be regenerated, and to worship the Lord, Jehovah does not despise His bound ones. Heaven and earth will praise Him, the seas and everything that creeps in them! Psalms 69:33-34.

That 'the earth' means that which receives is seen in Zechariah,

Jehovah is He who stretches out the heavens, and founds the earth, and forms the spirit of man within him. Zechariah 12:1.

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

From Swedenborg's Works

 

Sacred Scripture #102

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102. Angels of heaven have informed me that the ancients had a Word written entirely in correspondences, but that it was later lost; and they have said that this Word is still preserved among them in heaven and is in use among ancients in the particular heaven where the people live who had that Word when they were living in this world.

Some of the ancients among whom that Word is still in use in heaven came from the land of Canaan and its adjoining regions - from Syria, for example; from Mesopotamia, Arabia, Chaldea, Assyria; from Egypt; from Sidon, Tyre, and Nineveh - all regions inhabited by people who were devoted to symbolic worship and therefore to the knowledge of correspondences. Their wisdom in those days was based on that knowledge, and by means of it they had an inner perception and communication with the heavens. The ones who were more deeply knowledgeable about the correspondences of that Word were called “the wise” and “the intelligent, ” though later they were called “diviners” and “magi.”

[2] However, since that Word was full of a kind of correspondence that pointed in a remote way to heavenly and spiritual realities and therefore began to be distorted by too many people, in the course of time, under the Lord’s divine providence, it vanished and eventually was lost; and they were given another Word composed by means of less remote correspondences. This was done through the prophets among the children of Israel.

All the same, that Word kept many of the place-names in Canaan and in surrounding parts of the Middle East with meanings similar to the ones they had in the earlier Word. That is the reason Abram was ordered to go to that land and why his descendants from Jacob on were brought back into it.

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