16. Verse 1. In the beginning God created heaven and earth. The most ancient times of all are called 'the beginning', and are throughout the Prophets referred to as 'days of antiquity' and also 'days of eternity'. 'The beginning' also embodies within it that first Period when a person is being regenerated, for at that time he is being born anew and receiving life. Regeneration itself is therefore called a new creation of man. Almost everywhere in the prophetical sections 'to create', 'to form', and 'to make' mean to regenerate, though each of these verbs has a different shade of meaning, as in Isaiah,

Every one who is called by My name - I have created him for My glory, I have formed him, I have also made him. Isaiah 43:7

This is why the Lord is called Redeemer, One who forms from the womb, Maker, and also Creator, as in the same prophet,

I am Jehovah, your Holy One, the Creator of Israel, your King. Isaiah 43:15.

In David,

A people to be created will praise Jah. Psalms 102:18.

In the same author,

You send forth Your Spirit; they are created; and You renewest the face ¹ of the ground. Psalms 104:30.

'Heaven' means the internal man, and 'earth' the external man prior to regeneration. This will be seen further on.

Footnotes:

2731. I have heard from those most ancient people that conjugial love is such that one partner desires to be wholly the other's, and that this desire is reciprocal; and that when partners are expressing and receiving it from each other they experience the happiness of heaven. I have also heard that their minds are so joined one to the other that the expression and receipt of that reciprocal desire exists in every single detail of life, that is, in every single part of affection and in every single part of thought. For this reason it has been ordained by the Lord that wives should be affections for good which belong to the will and that husbands should be thoughts about truth which belong to the understanding; also that marriage should exist from such affection and thought, like that between will and understanding, and between every single part of these with the person in whom good married to truth exists, and truth married to good.