圣经文本

 

Genesis第6章

学习

   

1 And after a time, when men were increasing on the earth, and had daughters,

2 The sons of God saw that the daughters of men were fair; and they took wives for themselves from those who were pleasing to them.

3 And the Lord said, My spirit will not be in man for ever, for he is only flesh; so the days of his life will be a hundred and twenty years.

4 There were men of great strength and size on the earth in those days; and after that, when the sons of God had connection with the daughters of men, they gave birth to children: these were the great men of old days, the men of great name.

5 And the Lord saw that the sin of man was great on the earth, and that all the thoughts of his heart were evil.

6 And the Lord had sorrow because he had made man on the earth, and grief was in his heart.

7 And the Lord said, I will take away man, whom I have made, from the face of the earth, even man and beast and that which goes on the earth and every bird of the air; for I have sorrow for having made them.

8 But Noah had grace in the eyes of God.

9 These are the generations of Noah. Noah was an upright man and without sin in his generation: he went in the ways of God.

10 And Noah had three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth.

11 And the earth was evil in God's eyes and full of violent ways.

12 And God, looking on the earth, saw that it was evil: for the way of all flesh had become evil on the earth.

13 And God said to Noah, The end of all flesh has come; the earth is full of their violent doings, and now I will put an end to them with the earth.

14 Make for yourself an ark of gopher wood with rooms in it, and make it safe from the water inside and out.

15 And this is the way you are to make it: it is to be three hundred cubits long, fifty cubits wide, and thirty cubits high.

16 You are to put a window in the ark, a cubit from the roof, and a door in the side of it, and you are to make it with a lower and second and third floors.

17 For truly, I will send a great flow of waters over the earth, for the destruction from under the heaven of all flesh in which is the breath of life; everything on the earth will come to an end.

18 But with you I will make an agreement; and you will come into the ark, you and your sons and your wife and your sons' wives with you.

19 And you will take with you into the ark two of every sort of living thing, and keep them safe with you; they will be male and female.

20 Two of every sort of bird and cattle and of every sort of living thing which goes on the earth will you take with you to keep them from destruction.

21 And make a store of every sort of food for yourself and them.

22 And all these things Noah did; as God said, so he did.

   

来自斯威登堡的著作

 

Arcana Coelestia#581

学习本章节

  
/10837  
  

581. That 'the Nephilim' means those who, persuaded of their own prominence and superiority, treated everything holy and true as being worthless is clear from what comes before and directly after; that is to say, they immersed matters of doctrine in their own evil desires, which is what is meant by the statement about the sons of God going in to the daughters of man, who bore children to them. Persuasion concerning self and its own delusions also grows as more and more things enter in, till at length that persuasion is inerasable. And when doctrinal matters concerning faith are added as well, utterly persuasive assumptions cause them to treat everything holy and true as being worthless, and they become Nephilim. As has been stated, this set of people who lived before the Flood are such that all spirits are choked to death by their absolutely dreadful delusions which spread from them like a sphere that is poisonous and choking. Spirits are so choked to death by them that they do not know how to think, and as a result feel semi-dead. And unless the Lord by His Coming into the world had freed the world of spirits from so pernicious a set of people, no one could possibly have stayed on there, and so the human race, which the Lord governs by means of spirits, would have perished. Consequently these people are now detained in a hell beneath what looks like a misty solid rock, beneath the heel of the left foot. Nor do they ever try to escape. The world of spirits is accordingly free of that extremely dangerous crew. That crew and the thoroughly poisonous sphere of persuasions from it will in the Lord's Divine mercy be dealt with as a separate subject. 1 These are the people called the Nephilim, and they treat all that is holy and true as being worthless.

[2] Further mention is made of them in the Word, though their descendants were called Anakim and Rephaim. The fact that they were called Anakim is clear in Moses,

The men who explored the land of Canaan said, We saw the Nephilim there, the sons of Anak who were descendants of the Nephilim; and in our own eyes we were like locusts, and so we were in their eyes. Numbers 13:33.

The fact that they were called Rephaim is clear once again in Moses,

The Emim lived formerly in the land of Moab, a people great and many, and tall like the Anakim. The Rephaim were also considered to be as Anakim; and the Moabites called them Emim. Deuteronomy 2:10-11.

The Nephilim are not mentioned again, but the Rephaim are. In the Prophets the description of them fits what has been said about them already, as in Isaiah,

Hell beneath has been stirred up for you, to meet you as you come. He has roused the Rephaim for you. Isaiah 14:9

This refers to the hell where such people are.

In the same prophet,

The dead will not live, the Rephaim will not rise. To that end You have visited and destroyed them, and wiped out all remembrance of them. Isaiah 26:14.

This also refers to that hell of theirs from which they will never rise up again. And in the same prophet,

Your dead will live, my corpse will rise again. Wake up and sing, O inhabitants of the dust. For Your dew is a dew of herbs. But You will cast away the land of the Rephaim. Isaiah 26:19.

'The land of the Rephaim' is that self same hell.

In David,

Will You work a wonder for the dead? Will the Rephaim rise up and confess You? Psalms 88:10.

This similarly refers to that hell of theirs and to the fact that they can never again rise up and contaminate the atmosphere of the world of spirits with the utterly dreadful poison of their persuasions. Provision has been made by the Lord however to prevent the human race ever again being steeped in such dreadful delusions and persuasions. But the people who lived before the Flood were of such a nature and disposition that they were able to be steeped in them, for reasons until now unknown to anybody, which too will in the Lord's Divine mercy be dealt with later on.

脚注:

1. i.e. in 1265-1272

  
/10837  
  

Thanks to the Swedenborg Society for the permission to use this translation.