The Bible

 

Genesis 9

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1 And God blesseth Noah, and his sons, and saith to them, `Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the earth;

2 and your fear and your dread is on every beast of the earth, and on every fowl of the heavens, on all that creepeth on the ground, and on all fishes of the sea -- into your hand they have been given.

3 Every creeping thing that is alive, to you it is for food; as the green herb I have given to you the whole;

4 only flesh in its life -- its blood -- ye do not eat.

5 `And only your blood for your lives do I require; from the hand of every living thing I require it, and from the hand of man, from the hand of every man's brother I require the life of man;

6 whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man is his blood shed: for in the image of God hath He made man.

7 And ye, be fruitful and multiply, teem in the earth, and multiply in it.'

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

9 `And I, lo, I am establishing My covenant with you, and with your seed after you,

10 and with every living creature which [is] with you, among fowl, among cattle, and among every beast of the earth with you, from all who are going out of the ark -- to every beast of the earth.

11 And I have established My covenant with you, and all flesh is not any more cut off by waters of a deluge, and there is not any more a deluge to destroy the earth.'

12 And God saith, `This is a token of the covenant which I am giving between Me and you, and every living creature that [is] with you, to generations age-during;

13 My bow I have given in the cloud, and it hath been for a token of a covenant between Me and the earth;

14 and it hath come to pass (in My sending a cloud over the earth) that the bow hath been seen in the cloud,

15 and I have remembered My covenant which is between Me and you, and every living creature among all flesh, and the waters become no more a deluge to destroy all flesh;

16 and the bow hath been in the cloud, and I have seen it -- to remember the covenant age-during between God and every living creature among all flesh which [is] on the earth.'

17 And God saith unto Noah, `This [is] a token of the covenant which I have established between Me and all flesh that [is] upon the earth.'

18 And the sons of Noah who are going out of the ark are Shem, and Ham, and Japheth; and Ham is father of Canaan.

19 These three [are] sons of Noah, and from these hath all the earth been overspread.

20 And Noah remaineth a man of the ground, and planteth a vineyard,

21 and drinketh of the wine, and is drunken, and uncovereth himself in the midst of the tent.

22 And Ham, father of Canaan, seeth the nakedness of his father, and declareth to his two brethren without.

23 And Shem taketh -- Japheth also -- the garment, and they place on the shoulder of them both, and go backward, and cover the nakedness of their father; and their faces [are] backward, and their father's nakedness they have not seen.

24 And Noah awaketh from his wine, and knoweth that which his young son hath done to him,

25 and saith: `Cursed [is] Canaan, Servant of servants he is to his brethren.'

26 And he saith: `Blessed of Jehovah my God [is] Shem, And Canaan is servant to him.

27 God doth give beauty to Japheth, And he dwelleth in tents of Shem, And Canaan is servant to him.'

28 And Noah liveth after the deluge three hundred and fifty years;

29 and all the days of Noah are nine hundred and fifty years, and he dieth.

   

From Swedenborg's Works

 

Arcana Coelestia #981

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981. That “God blessed” signifies the presence and grace of the Lord, is evident from the signification of “to bless.” “To bless” in the Word, in the external sense signifies to enrich with every earthly and corporeal good, according to the explanation of the Word given by those who abide in the external sense—as the ancient and modern Jews, and also Christians, especially at the present day—wherefore they have made the Divine blessing to consist in riches, in an abundance of all things, and in self-glory. But in the internal sense, “to bless” is to enrich with all spiritual and celestial good, which blessing is and never can be given except by the Lord, and on this account it signifies His presence and grace, which necessarily bring with them such spiritual and celestial good. It is said presence, because the Lord is present solely in charity, and the subject treated of here is the regenerate spiritual man, who acts from charity. The Lord is indeed present with every man, but in proportion as a man is distant from charity, in the same proportion the presence of the Lord is-so to speak-more absent, that is, the Lord is more remote. The reason why grace is mentioned, and not mercy, is for the reason—which as I conjecture, has been hitherto unknown—that celestial men do not speak of grace, but of mercy, while spiritual men do not speak of mercy, but of grace. This mode of speaking is grounded in the circumstance that those who are celestial acknowledge the human race to be nothing but filthiness, and as being in itself excrementitious and infernal; wherefore they implore the mercy of the Lord, for mercy is predicated of such a condition. Those, however, who are spiritual, although they know the human race to be of such a nature, yet they do not acknowledge it, because they remain in their Own, which they love, and therefore they speak with difficulty of mercy, but easily of grace. This difference in language results from the difference in the humiliation. In proportion as anyone loves himself, and thinks that he can do good of himself, and thus merit salvation, the less capable is he of imploring the Lord’s mercy. The reason why some can implore grace is that it has become a customary form of speaking, in which there is but little of the Lord and much of self, as anyone may discover in himself while he names the grace of the Lord.

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