The Bible

 

Genesis 1:9

Study

       

9 And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so.

From Swedenborg's Works

 

Arcana Coelestia #10157

Study this Passage

  
/ 10837  
  

10157. 'That I may dwell in their midst' means what is Divine and the Lord's, which is the All in all of heaven and of the Church. This is clear from the meaning of 'dwelling in the midst of the children of Israel', when it refers to Jehovah, as the Lord's presence and His influx through good in heaven and in the Church, dealt with in 10153. And since His presence there is meant, what is Divine and His, the All in all there, is also meant. For the Lord is present with the angels of heaven and with members of the Church not in what is their own but in what is His with them, thus in what is Divine, as accords with what has been shown above in 10151; and when the Lord is present in what is Divine and His in the heavens and in the Church He is also the All in all there. Therefore He constitutes heaven itself, which also explains why the whole of heaven presents an image of the Lord as to His Divine Human, and why heaven in its entirety is a human being, called the Grand Man, a subject dealt with at the ends of a number of chapters, see the places referred to in 9276(end), 10030(end). It also explains why 'man' (homo) in the Word means the Church and also heaven, 478, 768, 3636, and why those who are in heaven, and those who are truly in the Church, are said to be 'in the Lord', 3637, 3638, since the good of love to and the truth of faith in the Lord, received from the Lord, are present in them.

  
/ 10837  
  

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

Commentary

 

Two

  

The number "two" has two different meanings in the Bible. In most cases "two" indicates a joining together or unification. This is easy to see if we consider the conflicts we tend to have between our "hearts" and our "heads" -- between what we want and what we know. Our "hearts" tell us that we want pie with ice cream for dinner; our "heads" tell us we should have grilled chicken and salad. If we can bring those two together and actually want what's good for us, we'll be pretty happy. We're built that way -- with our emotions balanced against our intellect -- because the Lord is built that way. His essence is love itself, or Divine Love, the source of all caring, emotion and energy. It is expressed as Divine Wisdom, which gives form to that love and puts it to work, and is the source of all knowledge and reasoning. In His case the two aspects are always in conjunction, always in harmony. It's easy also to see how that duality is reflected throughout creation: plants and animals, food and drink, silver and gold. Most importantly, it's reflected in the two genders, with women representing love and men representing wisdom. That's the underlying reason why conjunction in marriage is such a holy thing. So when "two" is used in the Bible to indicate some sort of pairing or unity, it means a joining together. In rare cases, however, "two" is used more purely as a number. In these cases it stands for a profane or unholy state that comes before a holy one. This is because "three" represents a state of holiness and completion (Jesus, for instance, rose from the tomb on the third day), and "two" represents the state just before it.