The Bible

 

Genesis 1:24

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24 And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so.

Commentary

 

One

  

A company might have executives setting policy and strategy, engineers designing products, managers handling personnel and others handling various functions. They all do different things -- but if they're doing them with a shared underlying purpose, the company -- and the individuals in it -- will likely be successful. The Lord wants all human society to function in a similar way. We have different skills and individual loves, but if we all share a mutual love -- a love of serving others -- then society will function as one, will be a reflection of heaven and will be a good receptacle for the Lord's love. This can also happen within each of us, as we unify our talents and ideas around a central love. And in an abstract sense, it illustrates how a wide collection of varying ideas can be unified around a shared good intention. That is the kind of love pictured when “one” is used in the Bible, either as a specific number or in the sense of several people or objects “being one.” In more casual references -- when used to identify a specific person or object -- the meaning is relatively literal, and is connected to that person or object.

From Swedenborg's Works

 

Arcana Coelestia #1012

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1012. The literal sense of the words 'whoever sheds man's blood in man, his blood shall be shed' implies someone shedding another' s blood, whereas the internal sense does not imply another's blood but the charity residing with oneself. Hence also the wording 'man's blood in man'. Sometimes when the literal sense refers to two people, only one person is meant in the internal sense. 'Man within man' is the internal man, and therefore whoever destroys charity which belongs to the internal man, or is the internal man himself, 'his blood shall be shed', that is, he condemns himself.

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