1587. Before Jehovah had destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah symbolizes the outer self as destroyed by evil cravings and false or distorted convictions. This can be seen from the symbolism of Sodom as evil cravings and from the symbolism of Gomorrah as distorted convictions. These two are what destroy our outer self and divide it from our inner self. These two were also what destroyed the earliest church before the Flood. Cravings for evil belong to the will, and distortions adopted as convictions belong to the intellect, and when the two of them take over, our whole outer self is destroyed. Once destroyed, it also detaches from our inner self; not that our soul, or spirit, separates from the body, but that the goodness and truth coming from our soul or spirit does. Then goodness and truth no longer influence us except in a distant way. (I will say more about this influence elsewhere, by the Lord's divine mercy.) 1
The Lord came into the world because the outer self in the human race had been ruined in this way and its link with the inner self (that is, with goodness and truth) had been broken. He came into the world, then, to join and unite his outer self with his inner, or in other words, to join and unite his human quality with his divine.
The present verse describes the character of the outer self when united to the inner, at least before Jehovah had destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah: it was like the garden of Jehovah, like the land of Egypt as you come to Zoar.
Footnotes:
1. On this influence of goodness and truth, see, for instance, the material following Swedenborg's exposition of chapters 46-50 of Genesis (§§6053-6058, 6189-6215, 6307-6327, 6466-6496, 6598-6626). [LHC]
