1044. And it will serve as a sign of the pact between me and the earth means an indication of the Lord's presence in charity, and the earth here means human selfhood, as statements above show [§§1036, 1038]. The symbolism of the earth as human selfhood can be seen from the inner meaning, too, and also from the sequence of thoughts. Earlier the text said, "This is the sign of the pact between me and you and every living soul that is with you," which symbolizes whatever has been reborn. Here, however, the phrasing changes: "It will serve as a sign of the pact between me and the earth." The change — and the repetition of the sign of the pact as well — shows that the present verse has another meaning. It shows, in fact, that the earth is that which has not been reborn and cannot be reborn, and this is human self-will.

[2] So far as their intellectual side goes, regenerate people are the Lord's, but so far as their voluntary side goes, they are their own. These two sides in a spiritual person are opposed to each other, but although a person's voluntary part is opposed, its presence is still unavoidable. All the darkness in spiritual people's intellectual part, all the thickening of their cloud, comes from the will side. The darkness constantly streams in from their will side, and the more it does, the more the cloud in their intellectual part thickens. On the other hand, the more the darkness withdraws, the more the cloud thins. That is the reason the earth in this case symbolizes human selfhood. (It was shown earlier that the earth symbolizes our bodily concerns and much else besides [§§16, 17, 28, 29, 82, 566, 620, 662, 800, 895].)

[3] The situation resembles that of two people who were once bound together in a pact of friendship, as will and intellect were among the people of the earliest church. When the friendship breaks down and enmity arises — as it did when humanity completely perverted its power of will — and a new pact is entered into, the hostile party then takes center stage, as if it were the party with which the pact had been struck. The pact is not with this side of our mind, however (since it is diametrically opposed and contrary), but with what streams from it, as noted earlier [§1023] — with intellectual selfhood, that is. The sign or indication of the pact is this: the larger the Lord's presence in our intellectual selfhood, the more remote our self-will.

The case is just like that of heaven and hell. A regenerate person's intellectual half is heaven because of the charity in which the Lord is present. But such a person's will side is hell. The more present the Lord is in heaven, the more hell moves away. When we depend on ourselves, we are in hell. When we depend on the Lord, we are in heaven and are always being lifted up from hell into heaven. The higher we rise, the greater the distance between us and our hell.

The sign or indication that the Lord is present, then, is the withdrawal of our own will. Times of trial and many other means of regeneration work to distance it.

16. Genesis 1:1. In the beginning, God created heaven and earth.

The word beginning is being used for the very earliest times. The prophets frequently call them "the days of old." ¹

"The beginning" includes the first period of regeneration too, as that is when people are being born anew and receiving life. Because of this, regeneration itself is called our new creation [2 Corinthians 5:17; Galatians 6:15]. Almost everywhere in the prophetic books, the words creating, forming, and making stand for regenerating, though with differences. ² In Isaiah, for example:

All have been called by my name, and I have created them for my glory; I have formed them; yes, I have made them. (Isaiah 43:7)

This is why the Lord is called Redeemer, One-Who-Forms-from-the-Womb, Maker, and Creator, as in the same prophet:

I am Jehovah, ³ your Holy One, the Creator of Israel, your Monarch. (Isaiah 43:15)

In David: ⁴

The people created will praise Jah. ⁵ (Psalms 102:18)

In the same author:

You send out your spirit — they will continue to be created — and you renew the face of the ground. ⁶ (Psalms 104:30)

Heaven, or the sky, symbolizes the inner self, and the earth, before regeneration occurs, symbolizes the outer self, as may be seen below [§§17, 24:3, 27].

Footnotes:

1038. The meaning of this is the sign of the pact as an indication of the presence of the Lord in neighborly love is established by the symbolism of a pact and of a sign of a pact. The symbolism of a pact as the presence of the Lord in neighborly love was illustrated above at Genesis 6:18 and earlier in the present chapter, at verse 9 [§§665-666, 1023].

The fact that a pact is the presence of the Lord in love and charity is evident from the nature of a pact. Every covenant exists to tie people together; that is, the goal is for people to live in mutual friendship, or in a state of love. This is why marriage too is called a compact or covenant.

The Lord cannot unite with us except in love and charity, because the Lord is love itself and mercy; he wants to save us all and draw us to heaven — that is, to himself — with a powerful force. So we can all see and conclude that no one could ever be united to the Lord except through that which is the Lord, or in other words, without doing as he does, or making common cause with him. To do this is to love the Lord in return and to love our neighbor as ourselves. This is the only means of union. This is the most essential element of a compact. When union does grow out of it, then the Lord, of course, is present.

It is true that the Lord is actually present with every individual, but he is closer to or farther from us to the exact extent that we approach love or distance ourselves from it.

[2] Since a pact is the Lord's close connection with us through love or, to put it another way, is the presence of the Lord with us in love and charity, the Word calls the pact itself a pact of peace. This is because peace symbolizes the Lord's kingdom, and the Lord's kingdom consists of mutual love, which is the only thing that affords peace. In Isaiah, for instance:

"The mountains will withdraw and the hills recede, but my mercy will not withdraw from you, and my pact of peace will not recede," Jehovah has said, who shows you compassion. (Isaiah 54:10)

Mercy, which is a matter of love, is being called a pact of peace. In Ezekiel:

I will raise up over them a single shepherd (and he will pasture them): my servant David. He will pasture them, and he will serve them as shepherd, and I will cut a pact of peace with them. (Ezekiel 34:23, 25)

David obviously means the Lord, whose presence with a regenerate person is depicted in the words he will pasture them.

[3] In the same author:

My servant David will be monarch over them, and there will be a single shepherd for them all. And I will strike a pact of peace with them; it will be an eternal pact with them. And I will place them and make them multiply and put my sanctuary in their midst forever. And I will become their God, and they will become my people. (Ezekiel 37:24, 26-27)

Again David means the Lord. The sanctuary in their midst means love. The statement that he would become their God and that they would become his people means the Lord's presence and unity with us in love, that presence and unity being called a pact of peace and an eternal pact. In Malachi:

"You will know that I have sent you this commandment: that my compact should be with Levi," Jehovah Sabaoth ¹ has said. "My compact with him was one of life and peace; and I gave them to him along with fear, and he will fear me." (Malachi 2:4-5)

In the highest sense, Levi is the Lord, and as a result he is any person who has love and charity. So the compact of life and peace with Levi involves love and charity.

[4] In Moses, where he is speaking of Phinehas:

Here, now, I am giving him my pact of peace, and for him and for his seed after him it will be a pact of eternal priesthood. (Numbers 25:12-13)

Phinehas does not mean Phinehas but the priesthood that he represented, which symbolizes love in all its aspects, just as the whole priesthood of that religion did. Everyone realizes that Phinehas's priesthood was not eternal. In the same author:

Jehovah your God, he is God, a faithful God, keeping his pact and his mercy with those who love him and keep his commandments, to the thousandth generation. (Deuteronomy 7:9, 12)

The pact is quite explicitly the presence of the Lord with us in love, since the passage says it is with those who love him and keep his commandments.

[5] Since a pact is the Lord's close connection with us through love, it follows that it is also a connection through all the by-products of love, which consist of religious truth and are called commandments. All the commandments — and in fact the law and the prophets — are based on one solitary law, that we should love the Lord above all and our neighbor as ourselves. The Lord's words in Matthew 22:35-40 and Mark 12:28-34 make this clear. So the tablets on which the Ten Commandments were written are called the tablets of the covenant [Deuteronomy 9:9, 11, 15; Hebrews 9:4].

Since a pact or a close bond is achieved through the laws of love, or the commandments, such a bond was also achieved through societal laws that the Lord laid down for the Jewish religion, which are called testimonies. It was achieved through the Lord's requirements for religious ritual — called statutes — as well. All these rules are described as part of the pact, because they look to love and kindness as their goal. As we read of King Josiah:

The king stood by the pillar and struck a pact before Jehovah, to walk after Jehovah and to keep his commandments and his testimonies and his statutes, with all his heart and with all his soul, to secure the words of the pact. (2 Kings 23:3)

[6] These considerations now indicate what a pact is and show that it is an inward thing, since internal ties — never external ties separately from internal ones — are what bind us to the Lord. External practices are only tokens or representations of what lies inside. Our actions, for example, are tokens representing our thoughts and intentions, while the charitable deeds we do are tokens representing the love we cherish for our neighbor in heart and mind. In the same way, all the rituals of the Jewish religion foreshadowed and represented the Lord, and as a result they provided an image and representation of love and charity and all the effects of both. So it is our inner attributes that make the pact and the union possible; outward attributes are merely signs of the pact, and this is also what they are called.

The fact that inner attributes make the pact and the union possible is plain to see. In Jeremiah, for example:

"Look! The days are coming," says Jehovah, "when I will strike a new pact with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah unlike the pact that I struck with their ancestors, because they nullified my pact. But this is the pact that I will strike with the house of Israel after these days: I will put my law in the midst of them, and upon their heart I will write it." (Jeremiah 31:31-32, 33)

This is about a new church. It says openly that the actual covenant itself depends on inner qualities and in fact on those present in a conscience that has written on it the law, which has entirely to do with love, as noted.

[7] External observances, again, are not the pact, unless deeper impulses are attached to them and consequently work together with them toward one and the same end, by being united to them. Externals are signs of the pact, rather, their purpose being to bring the Lord to mind as tokens representing him. Evidence for these things is the fact that the Sabbath and circumcision are called signs of the pact. The Sabbath is so designated in Moses:

The children of Israel shall keep the Sabbath, to make the Sabbath an eternal pact throughout their generations. This sign will exist forever between me and the children of Israel. (Exodus 31:16-17)

Circumcision receives the designation in the same author:

This is my pact, which you will keep, between me and you and your seed after you: that every male be circumcised to you. And you will circumcise the flesh of your foreskin, and it will serve as a sign of the pact between me and you. (Genesis 17:10-11)

Blood, for the same reason, is also called the blood of the covenant in Exodus 24:7-8.

[8] The main reason external rituals are called signs of the pact is that they serve to bring to mind inner attributes — that is, the entities they symbolize. None of the rituals of the Jewish religion had any other purpose. As a result, the aids they had to remind them of deeper realities were also called signs. An example is their practice of binding the first great commandment on their hand and in a box on their brow, ² as described in Moses:

You shall love Jehovah your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your powers. And you shall bind these words as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as brow pieces between your eyes. (Deuteronomy 6:5, 8; 11:13, 18)

The hand symbolizes the will because it symbolizes strength, since strength belongs to the will. The brow pieces between the eyes symbolize the intellect. So the sign symbolizes remembering the first great commandment (which is the law in condensed form) in order to keep it constantly in the will and constantly in the thought. In other words, the goal is the presence of the Lord and of love in all our willing and all our thinking. This is how the Lord, and mutual love received from him, are present with angels. With the Lord's divine mercy, the nature of this continual presence will be discussed later [§§1276-1277, 6849, 7926:2, 9682].

Likewise here, where it says, "This is the sign of the pact that I make between me and you: My bow I have put in the cloud, and it will serve as a sign of the pact between me and the earth." No other sign is meant here than one indicating the presence of the Lord in neighborly love, and consequently it symbolizes recollection on our part.

How this sign — the bow in the cloud — served as an indication and reminder, though, will be told below [§1042], with the Lord's divine mercy.

Footnotes: