927. I will never again curse the ground on the human being's account means that humanity would no longer turn its back in the way people among the earliest church's descendants had done. This can be seen from earlier statements about the posterity of the earliest church. For the inner-level symbolism of cursing as turning away, see above (§§223, 245).

[2] The situation here and in what follows can also be seen from previous descriptions comparing the earliest church's later generations, which perished, with the new church called Noah. (That situation includes the fact that people no longer turned their backs, as members of the earliest church had done, and that they were no longer able to destroy themselves.) As noted in those places [§§310:1, 398, 640, 875:4], the will and intellect of people in the earliest church constituted a single mind. For them, in other words, love was planted in the volitional side, and at the same time so was faith, which filled the second part of the mind, or the intellectual side. Their descendants consequently inherited a will and an intellect that formed a single unit. So when self-love and the mad desires that it spawns started to take over their volitional side, displacing love for the Lord and charity toward their neighbor, it totally corrupted not only the volitional side, or the will, but at the same time the intellectual part, or the intellect. The corruption intensified when the final generation merged falsity with their cravings and by this means became Nephilim. ¹ Having become Nephilim, they could not be salvaged, because their mind on both its sides — that is, their whole mind — was destroyed.

[3] But since the Lord foresaw this, he also provided that humankind should be rehabilitated. The means would be an ability to reform and regenerate the second or intellectual part of their mind and to receive in it the seed of a new will. The new will is conscience, through which the Lord puts into action the good urges of love or charity and the true ideas of faith.

In this way, by the Lord's divine mercy, humankind was restored.

These are the things symbolized in the current verse by I will never again curse the ground on the human being's account, because what human hearts fabricate is evil from their youth. And I will not strike every living thing again as I have done.

Footnotes:

223. Since the Lord's face is mercy, peace, and everything good, it is clear that he never looks at anyone except with mercy and never turns his face from anyone. It is we, when we are wrapped up in evil, who turn our faces away. As the Lord said through Isaiah:

Your offenses are what cause a separation between you and your God; and your sins hide his face from you. (Isaiah 59:2)

Likewise it says here that they hid themselves from Jehovah's face because they were naked.

398. To see that going out from before Jehovah [or from Jehovah's face] means being cut off from the good inherent in a loving faith, review the comments above at verse 14 [§387]. The meaning of his living in the land of Nod as living outside truth and goodness is established by the meaning of the [Hebrew] word nod: to be a wanderer and fugitive. ¹ And being a wanderer and fugitive means being deprived of truth and goodness, as you can also see above [§382].

Living to the east of Eden means living by the dictates of the intellectual part of the mind, where before love had reigned supreme; it is also living by the dictates of the rational mind, where before charity had reigned supreme. This is established by earlier statements [§§98, 101] concerning the symbolism of Eden's east, in which the east is identified with the Lord, and Eden, with love.

Among the people of the earliest church, the mind, composed of will and intellect, was unified. The will part of the mind was everything, with the result that the intellect belonged to the will. This was because they made no distinction between love (in the will) and faith (in the intellect), since love was everything and faith belonged to love. After faith was detached from love, however, as it was by those referred to as "Cain," the will no longer ruled in any form. But because in that kind of mind the intellect ruled in place of the will — that is, faith ruled in place of love — it says that Cain lived to the east of Eden. This was due to the singling out of faith (as just described) by the mark put on it to preserve it for the use of the human race.

Footnotes: