1022. Genesis 9:9-10. "And I — yes, I — am setting up my pact with you and with your seed after you, and with every living soul that is with you: bird, beast, and every wild animal of the earth with you, from among all those coming out of the ark, including every wild animal of the earth."

And I — yes, I — am setting up my pact symbolizes the presence of the Lord in charity. With you symbolizes a spiritual person who has been reborn. And with your seed after you symbolizes those who are created anew. With every living soul that is with you symbolizes everything in general that has been reborn in us. A bird symbolizes our intellectual abilities in particular. A beast symbolizes what belongs to our new will in particular. Every wild animal of the earth symbolizes our lower capacities of intellect and will, coming from those higher ones. With you here again means with a spiritual person who has been reborn. From among all those coming out of the ark symbolizes people in the church. Including every wild animal of the earth symbolizes people outside the church.

162. All laws ordaining what is true and right flow from heavenly origins, or from the structure of the inner life in a person who belongs to heaven. Heaven, taken as a whole, is a heavenly person because the Lord alone is a heavenly person. He is the totality of each and every thing in heaven and in the heavenly individual. This is how the inhabitants there come to be called heavenly.

Since heavenly origins or the structure of a heavenly person's life is the source from which arises every law ordaining what is true and right — most of all the law for marriage — the heavenly marriage is the source and pattern for all marriages on earth. The heavenly marriage allows for one Lord and one heaven, or one church with the Lord as head. The resulting law for marriage is that there must be one man and one wife. When there are, they represent the heavenly marriage and provide a model of the heavenly person.

Not only was this law revealed to the men of the earliest church, it was also written on their inner being. Consequently a man in those times had just one wife and set up one household. But when the descendants of those earliest people stopped being deep people and became shallow instead, they began to marry many wives.

[2] For the men of the earliest church, the love that belongs to marriage was like heaven itself and its happiness, because their marriages represented the heavenly marriage. When that church started to go downhill, they no longer found happiness in marriage love but in the enjoyment of many partners instead — a pleasure that resides in the outer self. The Lord calls this phenomenon hard-heartedness, the grounds on which Moses allowed them to marry multiple wives. As the Lord himself teaches:

Because of your hardness of heart Moses wrote you this commandment. From the beginning of creation, though, God made them male and female. Therefore a person shall leave his father and mother and cling to his wife, and the two will become one flesh; so they are no longer two but one flesh. What God has joined together, then, no human shall separate. (Mark 10:5, 6, 7, 8, 9)