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:

10732. 'You shall not kindle a fire in any of your dwelling-places on the sabbath day' means that nothing of the love that is a person's own, that is, no self-love or love of the world, should appear at this time in any single thing in the person which comes from the Lord. This is clear from the meaning of 'a fire' as love in both the senses dealt with in 6832, 7324, 7575, 9141, at this point the love that is a person's own, namely self-love and love of the world, the source of every evil desire, and of all evil and falsity; and from the meaning of 'the dwelling-places of the children of Israel' as the Church's forms of good and its truths which reside with a person and come from the Lord. For by 'dwelling-places' the things that reside interiorly in a person, thus those in his mind, are meant, see 7719, 7910, 8269, 8309, 10153, in this instance the forms of good and the truths which come from the Lord; and by 'the children of Israel' the Church is meant, 9340. Because things such as these were meant by 'a fire', they were forbidden to kindle a fire on the sabbath day. As regards what being led by self and selfish loves and not by the Lord implies, see immediately above in 10731.