82. Genesis 2:1. And the heavens and the earth were completed, and their whole army.
This means that we are now spiritual — so much so that we have become "the sixth day." Heaven is our inner and the earth our outer being. Their army is love and faith, and knowledge about love and faith. These things were symbolized earlier by the great lights and the stars.
Scriptural passages quoted in the preceding chapter demonstrate that the inner being is called heaven and the outer being is called earth. 1 Let me add another from Isaiah:
I will render a man more rare than solid gold, and a human being [more rare] than the precious gold of Ophir. 2 Therefore I will strike the heavens with terror, and the earth will quake out of its place. (Isaiah 13:12-13)
And another:
You will forget Jehovah your maker, who stretches out the heavens and founds the earth. But I will put my words in your mouth, and in the shadow of my hand I will hide you, to stretch out heaven and found the earth. (Isaiah 51:13, 16)
All of this makes it clear that both heaven and earth refer to humankind.
Although the earliest church forms the subject here, the Word in its inner depths is such that whatever it says about the church applies also to every individual in the church. If we were not each a church, we could not be part of the church. Likewise, anyone who is not a temple to the Lord cannot be what the Temple symbolizes: a church and a heaven.
This is why the earliest church is referred to as a human being in the singular.
Footnotes:
1. There are a great many Scripture passages quoted in the previous chapter (from somewhere other than Genesis 1) that mention "heaven" or "earth": see §§17, 22-25, 28-29, 31, 34, 37, 40, 46, 49-50, 52, 55, 58. In that chapter Swedenborg explicitly draws the connection between "heaven" and the inner being in §24:3, and between "earth" and the outer being in §27. [JSR]
2. On the terms "man" and "human being" here, see note 1 in §40. [LHC]
