The Bible

 

Genesis 8

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1 God remembered Noah, all the animals, and all the livestock that were with him in the ship; and God made a wind to pass over the earth. The waters subsided.

2 The deep's fountains and the sky's windows were also stopped, and the rain from the sky was restrained.

3 The waters receded from the earth continually. After the end of one hundred fifty days the waters decreased.

4 The ship rested in the seventh month, on the seventeenth day of the month, on Ararat's mountains.

5 The waters receded continually until the tenth month. In the tenth month, on the first day of the month, the tops of the mountains were seen.

6 It happened at the end of forty days, that Noah opened the window of the ship which he had made,

7 and he sent forth a raven. It went back and forth, until the waters were dried up from the earth.

8 He sent forth a dove from him, to see if the waters were abated from the surface of the ground,

9 but the dove found no place to rest her foot, and she returned to him into the ship; for the waters were on the surface of the whole earth. He put forth his hand, and took her, and brought her to him into the ship.

10 He stayed yet another seven days; and again he sent forth the dove out of the ship.

11 The dove came back to him at evening, and, behold, in her mouth was an olive leaf plucked off. So Noah knew that the waters were abated from the earth.

12 He stayed yet another seven days, and sent forth the dove; and she didn't return to him any more.

13 It happened in the six hundred first year, in the first month, the first day of the month, the waters were dried up from the earth. Noah removed the covering of the ship, and looked. He saw that the surface of the ground was dried.

14 In the second month, on the twenty-seventh day of the month, the earth was dry.

15 God spoke to Noah, saying,

16 "Go out of the ship, you, and your wife, and your sons, and your sons' wives with you.

17 Bring forth with you every living thing that is with you of all flesh, including birds, livestock, and every creeping thing that creeps on the earth, that they may breed abundantly in the earth, and be fruitful, and multiply on the earth."

18 Noah went forth, with his sons, his wife, and his sons' wives with him.

19 Every animal, every creeping thing, and every bird, whatever moves on the earth, after their families, went out of the ship.

20 Noah built an altar to Yahweh, and took of every clean animal, and of every clean bird, and offered burnt offerings on the altar.

21 Yahweh smelled the pleasant aroma. Yahweh said in his heart, "I will not again curse the ground any more for man's sake, because the imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth; neither will I ever again strike everything living, as I have done.

22 While the earth remains, seed time and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease."

   

From Swedenborg's Works

 

Arcana Coelestia #848

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848. When temptations have come to an end there is so to speak fluctuation. And if the temptations are spiritual it is fluctuation between truth and falsity, as also becomes quite clear from the fact that temptation is the starting point to regeneration. The purpose of all regeneration therefore is that a person may receive new life, or rather that he may receive life, and from not being a man may become one, that is, from being a dead man may become one who is alive. When therefore his former life, which is purely animal, is destroyed by means of temptations he cannot after temptations do other than fluctuate between truth and falsity. Truth belongs to the new life, falsity to the old. Unless the former life is destroyed and this fluctuation takes place, spiritual seed can never be implanted because there is no ground for it.

[2] Once that former life has been destroyed however, and this kind of fluctuation is taking place, a person knows almost nothing at all of what truth and good are. Indeed he scarcely knows of the existence of any such thing as truth. Take, for example, the situation in which a person considers whether he is able to perform from the proprium any good deeds that stem from charity, that is, good works, as people call them, and whether merit rests in his proprium. He is in that case in such obscurity and darkness that when told that nobody is able to do anything good from himself, that is, from his proprium, still less merit anything, and that all good comes from the Lord and all merit is the Lord's, it must inevitably astonish him. The same applies to all other matters of faith. Nevertheless that obscurity or darkness in which he dwells is slowly and gradually lightened.

[3] Regeneration is exactly like when a person is born as an infant. At this point he is living in the greatest obscurity, knowing virtually nothing. This being so, general ideas of things flow in first, which gradually become more definite as specific ideas are introduced into the general, and further still as yet more detailed ideas are introduced into the specific. Detailed ideas light up the general so that he knows not merely of their existence but also the nature of them. A similar process takes place with everyone emerging from spiritual temptation; and the state is similar in the case of people in the next life who have been under the influence of falsities and who are now being vastated. This state is called fluctuation and is described here as 'the waters receding, going back and forth'.

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