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.

801. The portrayal of these pre-Flood people reveals what the literary mode of the earliest people was like and so what the prophetic mode was like. The chapter from here to the end describes those people, telling of their delusions in the current verse and of their appetites in verse 23 below. In other words, it depicts the condition of the ideas in their intellect and then the condition of the impulses in their will.

Although nothing in them was [truly] a matter of understanding or will, the contrary thoughts and impulses they had must still be called such. These include their distorted convictions, which are anything but matters of understanding, since they are the product of thought and of twisted logic; and their cravings, which are anything but a matter of will.

Those people are described, as I was saying, in respect first to their distorted convictions and next to their cravings, which is why the statements of verse 21 here are repeated in verse 23 below, although in a different order.

[2] The prophets used the same manner of expression. Its basis is the existence of two vital forces in us, one belonging to the ideas of the intellect, and the other to the intentions of the will. The two kinds of life force are perfectly distinct from each other. We consist of both, and although they are separate in people today, the one still has an influence on the other and for the most part unites with it. The fact that they unite can be established and illustrated by much supporting evidence, as can the way they unite.

Since we consist of these two sides, then — of intellect and will — and since the one side affects the other, when the Word draws a picture of a human being it depicts each of the two sides separately. This is the reason for the repetition, which would otherwise be a defect.

The same is true with every facet of reality, because different abstract phenomena exactly mirror conditions in the people who experience them. They are attributes of those people because they arise out of them. An abstract phenomenon separated from the person subject to it, or from a substance underlying it, has no reality at all. This is the reason the Word describes things as having two parts, in the manner detailed above. Doing so makes the portrayal of every phenomenon complete.