The Bible

 

Genesis 1:6

Study

       

6 And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.

Commentary

 

Six

  

Like most numbers in the Bible, "six" can have various meanings depending on context, but has a couple that are primary. When used in relation to time -- six days, six hours, six years, etc. -- six generally represents a state of labor, struggle and conflict, especially the conflict involved with spiritual growth. The six days of creation, for instance, represent the stages we go through in our lives, working toward the peaceful seventh day, in which our evil desires are removed from us and we can rest. In most other references, six represents all desires for good and all the true ideas that come from those desires for good -- or in the contrary sense, all evil and all the resulting false thinking.

From Swedenborg's Works

 

Heaven and Hell #250

Study this Passage

  
/ 603  
  

250. Conversation with angels is not granted, though, except to people who are focused on truths that flow from good intent, especially people who acknowledge the Lord and the divine nature within his human nature, because this is the truth in which heaven exists. For as already noted, the Lord is heaven's God (2-6); the Lord's divine nature makes heaven (7-12); the Lord's divine nature in heaven is love for him and thoughtfulness from him toward one's neighbor (13-19); and the whole heaven, grasped as a single entity, reflects a single individual, as does each community of heaven; and each individual angel has a perfect human form because of the Lord's divine human nature (59-86). We can see from this that conversation with angels is not granted except to people whose deeper levels have been opened by divine truths all the way to the Lord, since it is into these that the Lord flows within us, and when the Lord flows in, so does heaven.

The reason divine truths open our deeper levels is that we have been so created that our inner person is an image of heaven and our outer an image of the world (57); and our inner person is opened only by the divine truth that emanates from the Lord, because this is the light and the life of heaven (126-140).

  
/ 603  
  

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