586. a 1
What the thoughts of their heart fabricated was nothing but evil every day means that there was no perception of goodness or truth, because people immersed the teachings of faith in their filthy cravings, as has been said and shown [§§560, 570]. When this happened, all perception died out and in its place came monstrous convictions, or the most entrenched and fatal delusions. These were the cause of their extinction through suffocation. Such death-dealing persuasions are symbolized here by what the thoughts of their heart invented.
When what the heart fabricates is mentioned without the thoughts, it symbolizes the evil connected with self-love or with desire. An instance occurs in chapter 8 below, where after Noah had made burnt offerings Jehovah said, "I will never again curse the ground on the human being's account, because what people's hearts fabricate is evil from their youth" (Genesis 8:21). A fabrication is what we make up in our own minds and persuade ourselves is true.
[2] In Habakkuk, for instance:
What use is a sculpture? For its fabricator sculpted it — a cast image and that which teaches a lie. For the fabricator trusts in his fabrication [and] in the making of mute idols. (Habakkuk 2:18)
A sculpture symbolizes false persuasions based on premises we have conceived and hatched from our own minds. Fabricators are those who persuade themselves of the ideas described as fabrications. In Isaiah:
Oh, your upside-downness! Will the potter be considered clay because the product says to its maker, "That one did not make me" and the fabrication said to its fabricator, "That one did not understand me"? (Isaiah 29:16)
A fabrication here stands for self-centered thinking and the resulting conviction that falsity is true. In general a fabrication (or design) is what we make up out of our heart or our will, and also out of our thoughts or persuasions. An example in David:
Jehovah knows our fabrication; he remembers that we are dust. (Psalms 103:14)
In Moses:
I know their designs that they are forming today, before I bring them into the land. (Deuteronomy 31:21)
586. b Genesis 6:6. And Jehovah was sorry that he had made humankind on the earth; and he grieved to himself at heart.
He was sorry symbolizes mercy. He grieved at heart has the same symbolism. Regret has to do with wisdom, grieving at heart with love.
Footnotes:
1. (in §586a:1). This paragraph and the next are both numbered 586 in the first Latin edition. Traditionally, this paragraph has been numbered 586, and the next, 586a; the current edition labels them 586a and 586b, respectively. [LHC]
