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:

2143. 'Jehovah appeared to him' means the Lord's perception. This becomes clear from the fact that historical events as described in the Word are representative, and nothing else, and the actual words used there serve to mean the things that occur in the internal sense. Featured at this point in the internal sense are the Lord and His perception; and that perception was represented by the event of Jehovah's appearing to Abraham. Every appearance, every utterance, and every deed recorded in the historical sections of the Word is in this manner representative. But what each represents becomes apparent only if attention is paid to historical descriptions solely as objects - as when objects of sight serve solely to give one an opportunity and the ability to think about more sublime things, as for example when people look at gardens and yet think solely of fruits and their uses, and also of the delight of life given by these, and think still more sublimely of the happiness of paradise, or heaven. When their thoughts are on those things they do, it is true, behold the particular objects in the gardens, yet with so little interest in them as mere objects that they pay no attention to them. It is similar with the historical descriptions in the Word. When people's thoughts are on the celestial and spiritual things contained in the internal sense, just as little attention is paid to the historical events described or to the words themselves used to describe them.