The Bible

 

Genesis 9

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1 And God blessed Noah and his sons, and said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth.

2 And the fear of you and the dread of you shall be upon every beast of the earth, and upon every fowl of the air, upon all that moveth upon the earth, and upon all the fishes of the sea; into your hand are they delivered.

3 Every moving thing that liveth shall be meat for you; even as the green herb have I given you all things.

4 But flesh with the life thereof, which is the blood thereof, shall ye not eat.

5 And surely your blood of your lives will I require; at the hand of every beast will I require it, and at the hand of man; at the hand of every man's brother will I require the life of man.

6 Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed: for in the image of God made he man.

7 And you, be ye fruitful, and multiply; bring forth abundantly in the earth, and multiply therein.

8 And God spake unto Noah, and to his sons with him, saying,

9 And I, behold, I establish my covenant with you, and with your seed after you;

10 And with every living creature that is with you, of the fowl, of the cattle, and of every beast of the earth with you; from all that go out of the ark, to every beast of the earth.

11 And I will establish my covenant with you; neither shall all flesh be cut off any more by the waters of a flood; neither shall there any more be a flood to destroy the earth.

12 And God said, This is the token of the covenant which I make between me and you and every living creature that is with you, for perpetual generations:

13 I do set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be for a token of a covenant between me and the earth.

14 And it shall come to pass, when I bring a cloud over the earth, that the bow shall be seen in the cloud:

15 And I will remember my covenant, which is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh; and the waters shall no more become a flood to destroy all flesh.

16 And the bow shall be in the cloud; and I will look upon it, that I may remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is upon the earth.

17 And God said unto Noah, This is the token of the covenant, which I have established between me and all flesh that is upon the earth.

18 And the sons of Noah, that went forth of the ark, were Shem, and Ham, and Japheth: and Ham is the father of Canaan.

19 These are the three sons of Noah: and of them was the whole earth overspread.

20 And Noah began to be an husbandman, and he planted a vineyard:

21 And he drank of the wine, and was drunken; and he was uncovered within his tent.

22 And Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father, and told his two brethren without.

23 And Shem and Japheth took a garment, and laid it upon both their shoulders, and went backward, and covered the nakedness of their father; and their faces were backward, and they saw not their father's nakedness.

24 And Noah awoke from his wine, and knew what his younger son had done unto him.

25 And he said, Cursed be Canaan; a servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren.

26 And he said, Blessed be the LORD God of Shem; and Canaan shall be his servant.

27 God shall enlarge Japheth, and he shall dwell in the tents of Shem; and Canaan shall be his servant.

28 And Noah lived after the flood three hundred and fifty years.

29 And all the days of Noah were nine hundred and fifty years: and he died.

   

From Swedenborg's Works

 

Arcana Coelestia #988

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988. And upon every bird of heaven. That this signifies upon falsities of reasoning, is evident from the signification of “bird.” In the Word “birds” signify intellectual things: those which are gentle, useful, and beautiful, signifying intellectual truths; and those which are fierce, useless, and ugly, signifying intellectual falsities, or falsities of reasoning. (That they signify intellectual things may be seen above, n. 40, 776, 870.) From this it is also evident that “birds” signify reasonings and their falsities. That there may be no doubt let the following passages (in addition to those cited about the raven, n. 866) serve for confirmation.

In Jeremiah:

I will visit upon them in four kinds, saith Jehovah; the sword to slay, and the dogs to drag, and the fowl of heaven, and the beasts of the earth, to devour and to destroy (Jeremiah 15:3).

In Ezekiel:

Upon his ruin all the fowls of the heaven shall dwell, and all the wild animals of the field shall be upon his branches (Ezekiel 31:13).

In Daniel:

At last upon the bird of abominations shall be desolation (Daniel 9:27).

In John:

Babylon is become a hold of every unclean and hateful bird (Revelation 18:2).

Many times it is said in the Prophets that carcasses should be given for meat to the fowl of the air and to the beast of the field (Jeremiah 7:33; 19:7; 34:20; Ezekiel 29:5; 39:4; Psalms 79:2; Isaiah 18:6). By this was signified that they should be destroyed by falsities, which are “birds of heaven” and by evils, or cupidities, which are the “beasts of the earth.”

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

From Swedenborg's Works

 

Arcana Coelestia #866

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866. That a “raven” signifies falsities, is evident in a general way from what has been said and shown above concerning birds, that they signify things of understanding, of reason, and of memory-knowledge, and also the opposite, which are reasonings and falsities. Both of these are described in the Word by various species of birds; truths of understanding by birds which are gentle, beautiful, and clean; and falsities by those which are ravenous, ugly, and unclean, in each case varying according to the species of truth or falsity. Gross and dense falsities are described by owls and ravens; by owls because they live in the darkness of night, and by ravens, because they are of a black color. As in Isaiah:

The owl also and the raven shall dwell therein (Isaiah 34:11),

where the Jewish Church is described as being the habitation of mere falsities, represented by the owl and the raven.

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