195. The earliest people did not compare various human traits to animals and birds but called them such. That was their manner of speaking. This practice persisted in the ancient church, which came after the Flood, and the [Old Testament] prophets perpetuated it.
Snakes was their word for a person's sensory abilities. This was because sense impressions rise directly out of the body, just as snakes lie directly on the ground. Those people referred to false logic concerning the mysteries of faith, when it sprang from sense impressions, as snake venom, and they called the logicians themselves snakes. People who employ this kind of logic spend much time constructing arguments based on things they can sense and specifically on things they can see — things of the earth, their body, the world, and nature — and that is why the snake was described as being crafty above every wild animal of the field.
[2] David uses similar words:
They sharpen their tongue like a snake; the venom of an asp is on their lips. (Psalms 140:3, 4, 5)
This speaks of people who beguile others with their false reasoning. In the same author:
They go astray from the womb, speaking a lie; they have venom like the venom of a snake. Like a deaf poison asp, they stop up their ear so as not to hear the voice of those who murmur, of a sage who associates in societies. 1 (Psalms 58:3, 4, 5)
The snake venom refers to specious arguments, which tend to prevent people from even listening to anything wise — the "voice of a sage." That is the source of a customary saying among the ancients that a snake would stop up its ear. 2 In Amos:
... as if you come into the house and lean your hand on the wall and a snake bites you. Is the day of Jehovah not shadow and lack of light? And is there not darkness and lack of radiance on it? (Amos 5:19-20)
The hand on the wall stands for our independent powers and for confidence in the evidence of our senses. These cause blindness, as described.
[3] In Jeremiah:
The sound of Egypt will travel like a snake, because they will travel in strength and come with axes against her, as if they were woodcutters. "Let them cut down her forest," says Jehovah, "because it will not be explored. For they have become more numerous than locusts and there is no counting them. The daughter of Egypt has been shamed; she will be delivered into the hand of the people of the north." (Jeremiah 46:20, 22-23, 24)
Egypt stands for sophistry about divine subjects based on physical sensation and factual knowledge. Sophistic arguments are called the sound of a snake, and the blindness that results is symbolized by the people of the north. In Job:
They will suck the venom of asps; the tongue of a viper will kill them. They will not see torrents, streaming rivers of honey and butter. (Job 20:16-17)
Rivers of honey and butter are spiritual and heavenly qualities, which reasoners "will not see." Their arguments are called the venom of asps and the tongue of a viper. For more on the meaning of a snake, see below at verses 14-15 [§§242-251, 254, 257-259].
Footnotes:
1. The Latin phrase here translated "of a sage who associates in societies," sociantis sodalitia sapientis, may aim to retain the hypnotic effect of both the alliteration and the obscurity of the Hebrew original: חוֹבֵר חֲבָרִים מְחֻכָּם (ḥôḇēr ḥăḇārîm mǝḥukkām). On the asp stopping its ear, see note 2 in §195. [LHC]
2. The idea that snakes can be charmed and pacified by certain types of speech, song, or instrumental music dates back to ancient times. Snakes were said to make themselves resistant to being thus charmed by stopping up their ears. See, for example, the statement in a commentary of church father Augustine (354-430) on Psalms 57:5 in the Vulgate Latin Bible (Psalms 58:6 in English Bibles), the same passage Swedenborg addresses here. In Augustine's report of the attempts of one of the Marsi (the ancient magicians and snake-charmers of central Italy) to charm a snake out of its cave, he notes: "It is said that when the snake is unwilling to come out, it presses one ear to the ground and stops the other ear with its tail in order not to hear the words by which it feels itself being compelled" (Augustine Enarrationes in Psalmos 57.7; translation by JSR). On the general notion that some serpents are able to resist being charmed, see Jeremiah 8:17. [JSR, SS]
