1024. The symbolism of with you as a spiritual person who has been reborn is established by a plethora of earlier statements to the effect that Noah and his sons symbolize a spiritual church that took the place of the earliest, heavenly church [§§597-598, 605, 726, 765, 788:1, 851]. Since they symbolize a church, they symbolize every member of that church and so a spiritual person who has been reborn.

585. The evil of the people in the land multiplied means that the will for good began to disappear, as can be seen from what was said above [§568] — that true will no longer existed but only desire. The same meaning can also be seen from the symbolism of the people in the land. At the literal level, the land is where the people are. On an inner plane, it is where love is, and since love is a matter of will or else of desire, the land is taken to mean human will itself. It is willing that makes a person human, and not so much knowing and understanding, since knowing and understanding derive from willing. Anything that fails to flow out of our will is something we do not want to know or understand. In fact when we speak and act at variance with our will, it is still a form of will — one far removed from our words and deeds — that controls us.

The land of Canaan (the Holy Land) is taken to stand for love and so for the will of a heavenly type of person, as many passages from the Word can prove. The same is true for the fact that the lands of various nations stand for the love in the hearts of those peoples — generally love for oneself and for worldly gain. But the term occurs so many times that there is not room to spend time on it here. ¹

All of this leads to the conclusion that the evil of the people in the land symbolizes evil on the earthly level, present in the will. It is said to have multiplied because it was not completely sinister in everyone; there were some who still wished good to others, although for selfish reasons. Its thorough corruption is what the thoughts of their heart fabricated.

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