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.

17. Genesis 1:2. And the earth was void and emptiness, and there was darkness on the face of the abyss, and the Spirit of God was constantly moving on the face of the water.

Before regeneration a person is called the void, empty earth, and also soil in which no seed of goodness or truth has been planted. ¹ Void refers to an absence of goodness and empty to an absence of truth. The result is darkness, in which a person is oblivious to or ignorant of anything having to do with faith in the Lord and consequently with a spiritual or heavenly life. The Lord portrays such a person this way in Jeremiah:

My people are dense; they do not know me. They are stupid children, without understanding. They are wise in doing evil but do not know how to do good. I looked at the earth, and there — void and emptiness; and to the heavens, and these had no light. (Jeremiah 4:22-23, 25)

Footnotes:

895. The meaning of the water drained off the earth as the fact that falsity did not appear at that time can be seen from earlier statements [§§857, 868, 887]. Specifically it means that in the people of this church, falsity was siphoned away from the contents of their will. The earth here symbolizes human will, which is nothing but corrupt desire, and that is why it says that the water drained off the earth. The ground in us, as I have said [§875:3], is in our intellectual part, where truth is sown. By no means does "ground" exist in our volitional part, which in spiritual people is separate from the intellectual part. That is why the statement that the face of the ground had dried up comes later in the verse.

With the people of the earliest church, the "ground" was in their volitional part, and the Lord sowed it with the seed of goodness. As a result, they were able to recognize and perceive truth from the viewpoint of goodness, or in other words, to acquire faith from love. If the same thing happened today, it would necessarily destroy us forever, because our will is completely perverted.

[2] What happens when seed is sown on the will side, and what when it is sown on the intellectual side, can be seen from this: The people of the earliest church received revelations that initiated them into a perception of goodness and truth from the time they were very small. Because the seed was sown on their will side, they perceived innumerable things without further instruction; the Lord gave them the ability to look at one general concept and recognize particular ideas and individual details. These we now have to learn before we can know them, and yet we are hardly able to see even one in a thousand.

People in a spiritual church recognize only what they learn and so what they know about, remember, and believe to be true. In fact if they learn falsity, and it becomes stamped on their minds as truth, they believe it. They cannot help perceiving it as true because they are persuaded it is so. Those who have a conscience hear a kind of inner voice, but the voice does no more than tell them a thing is true because it is what they have heard and learned. This standard forms their conscience, as can be seen from people with misguided consciences.