42. Verse 21 And God created the great sea monsters, and every living creature that creeps, which the waters produced abundantly according to their kinds; and all winged birds according to their kinds; and God saw that it was good.

As has been stated, 'fish' means facts, here facts quickened and brought to life through faith from the Lord. 'Sea monsters' means those facts' general sources, below which and from which details derive. Nothing whatever exists in the universe that does not depend on some general source for its commencement and continuance. In the Prophets sea monsters or whales are mentioned several times, and in those places they mean those general sources of facts. Pharaoh, the king of Egypt, who represents human wisdom or intelligence - that is, knowledge in general - is called 'a great sea monster', as in Ezekiel,

Behold, I am against you, Pharaoh king of Egypt, the great monster lying in the midst of his ¹ rivers, who has said, It is my river and I have made myself. Ezekiel 29:3.

[2] And elsewhere in Ezekiel,

Raise a lamentation over Pharaoh, king of Egypt, and say to him, You are like a monster in the seas, and you have come forth in your rivers, and have troubled the waters with your feet. Ezekiel 32:2

These words mean people who wish to penetrate the mysteries that are part of faith by means of facts, and so from themselves. In Isaiah,

On that day Jehovah will make a visitation with His hard and great and strong sword upon Leviathan the full-length serpent, ² and upon Leviathan the twisting serpent, and He will slay the monsters that are in the sea. Isaiah 27:1.

'Slaying the monsters in the sea' means preventing people's knowing facts even in their general aspects. In Jeremiah,

Nebuchadnezzar king of Babel has devoured me, he has troubled me, he has made me an empty vessel, he has swallowed me up like a sea monster, he has filled his belly with my delicacies, he has cast me out. Jeremiah 51:34.

This stands for the fact that mankind did swallow cognitions of faith, which are 'the delicacies' here, just as the sea monster swallowed up Jonah. In that story the sea monster stands for people who treat general cognitions of faith as mere facts, and behave accordingly.

Примітки:

1921. 'Do to her what is good in your eyes' means complete control over. This is clear without explanation. In the internal sense these words represent and mean that by His own power the Lord overcame, subdued, and cast out the evil which from what was hereditary had wormed itself also into this first rational, for, as has been stated, the rational was conceived from the Internal Man, which was Jehovah, as a father, and born from the exterior as a mother. Whatever was born from the exterior man possessed this hereditary element within it, thus evil as well. This was what the Lord overcame, subdued, and cast out by His own power and at length made Divine. The fact that He did so by His own power is clear from every single detail in this verse - the comment, 'Your servant-girl is in your hand' which means that He had this rational under His controlling power, followed next by 'so to her what is good in your eyes' which means complete control over it; and immediately after that 'Sarai humiliated her' which means subjection.

[2] These things were said to Sarai, who represents intellectual truth which the Lord Himself had and was the source from which He thought, as stated above in 1904, 1914, and from this truth He had complete control over the rational and also over the natural that was part of the exterior man. Anyone who thinks from intellectual truth and perceives from Divine good - which good was also His because it was the Father's, for He had no other soul - cannot do other than act from the power that is his own. Since therefore by His own power He tamed and cast out the evil present by heredity, it was by His own power as well that He united the Human Essence to the Divine Essence - the one being a consequence of the other.

[3] One who is conceived from Jehovah has no other Internal, that is, has none but Jehovah as his soul; for that reason He was as regards His very life itself Jehovah Himself. Jehovah, or the Divine Essence, cannot be divided in the way a human father's soul from which a child is conceived can be divided. To the extent the offspring moves away from the likeness of its father it moves away from the father himself, more and more so as it grows older. This is why a father's love for his children diminishes as they grow older. In the Lord's case it was different. As He grew older He did not so move away as regards the Human Essence but constantly drew closer until perfect union was achieved. From this it is clear that He is identical with Jehovah the Father, as He Himself also plainly teaches in John 14:6, 8-11.