圣经文本

 

Genesis第9章

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1 God blessed Noah and his sons, and said to them, "Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth.

2 The fear of you and the dread of you will be on every animal of the earth, and on every bird of the sky. Everything that the ground teems with, and all the fish of the sea are delivered into your hand.

3 Every moving thing that lives will be food for you. As the green herb, I have given everything to you.

4 But flesh with its life, its blood, you shall not eat.

5 I will surely require your blood of your lives. At the hand of every animal I will require it. At the hand of man, even at the hand of every man's brother, I will require the life of man.

6 Whoever sheds man's blood, his blood will be shed by man, for God made man in his own image.

7 Be fruitful and multiply. Bring forth abundantly in the earth, and multiply in it."

8 God spoke to Noah and to his sons with him, saying,

9 "As for me, behold, I establish my covenant with you, and with your offspring after you,

10 and with every living creature that is with you: the birds, the livestock, and every animal of the earth with you, of all that go out of the ship, even every animal of the earth.

11 I will establish my covenant with you: all flesh will not be cut off any more by the waters of the flood, neither will there ever again be a flood to destroy the earth."

12 God said, "This is the token of the covenant which I make between me and you and every living creature that is with you, for perpetual generations:

13 I set my rainbow in the cloud, and it will be for a sign of a covenant between me and the earth.

14 It will happen, when I bring a cloud over the earth, that the rainbow will be seen in the cloud,

15 and I will remember my covenant, which is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh, and the waters will no more become a flood to destroy all flesh.

16 The rainbow will be in the cloud. I will look at it, that I may remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth."

17 God said to Noah, "This is the token of the covenant which I have established between me and all flesh that is on the earth."

18 The sons of Noah who went forth from the ship were Shem, Ham, and Japheth. Ham is the father of Canaan.

19 These three were the sons of Noah, and from these, the whole earth was populated.

20 Noah began to be a farmer, and planted a vineyard.

21 He drank of the wine and got drunk. He was uncovered within his tent.

22 Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father, and told his two brothers outside.

23 Shem and Japheth took a garment, and laid it on both their shoulders, went in backwards, and covered the nakedness of their father. Their faces were backwards, and they didn't see their father's nakedness.

24 Noah awoke from his wine, and knew what his youngest son had done to him.

25 He said, "Canaan is cursed. He will be servant of servants to his brothers."

26 He said, "Blessed be Yahweh, the God of Shem. Let Canaan be his servant.

27 May God enlarge Japheth. Let him dwell in the tents of Shem. Let Canaan be his servant."

28 Noah lived three hundred fifty years after the flood.

29 All the days of Noah were nine hundred fifty years, then he died.

   

来自斯威登堡的著作

 

Spiritual Experiences#155

  
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155. About Speech and the understanding of things, with Angels

1. ) I have spoken with spirits around me about the speech of angels and their understanding of matters which the spirits are extremely interested in knowing about. Having been taught by experience, I said that the angels' speech cannot be perceptible to us, because it contains countless elements almost simultaneously, which would have to be unfolded extensively in a sequence and in many roundabout ways; and that it is not portrayable to us except by forms virtually beyond our grasp and my powers of description, whirling around together in gyrating motions, following the varying pattern of more inward forms. About these forms as they were shown to me, I have spoken elsewhere [191a-92a].

2. ) Meanwhile, there is a form of speech, or of very many speaking at the same time, which, when it falls into the lower orb, does not appear the same, but sometimes quite different, for the most part turning into pictorial symbolism like that of the Prophets, which consequently more inwardly contains heavenly, and therefore hidden, matters. There is a reactive understanding with the angels, that is, arising from these symbolic displays, which, when exhibited through our mental images, are transformed into heavenly subjects that angels can understand, so that the earthly paradise can pass over into the heavenly one.

3. ) It was also shown to me how angels, from facts of nature alone properly joined together, have understood a series of very lofty, heavenly matters. Yet this cannot happen with the angels except through the mercy of God the Messiah. 1747, the 21st of August (old calendar).

4. ) Such gyrating motions I have sometimes been able, by the Divine mercy of God the Messiah, to feel come over me vividly, and I was able to gather therefrom that myriads of such more inward mental images could compose one material one, we may call it, 1 in which such a countless number of elements are contained that a person in the world could never believe it, much less comprehend it. In every more inward mental image, in its turn, [are contained countless elements], but in an incalculably greater degree of perfection.

Now this form, and consequently the influence of God the Messiah through angels, and from them through spirits, upon human minds, becomes disturbed when a person lives in a contrary order, especially when one wants to go into the mysteries of religion by means of knowledge that has been called up by the love of self and the world, and therefore by cupidity. From this there arises a confusion or disturbance like that among the Babylonians building the tower, when their lips were confounded [Gen. 11:4-9], 2

5. ) affirming the absence of God the Messiah from humanity, even though all things are nevertheless ordered in such a way that they may be restored to a semblance of some heavenly form. This can take place in countlessly many ways. For no matter what abstruseness, entanglement, jumble, comes to exist in the lower realm or world, it can nevertheless be brought back to order by God the Messiah; otherwise mankind would perish and not be able to understand anything. On this account there is still a spiritual influence enabling them to exercise their reason. The door from the heavenly Paradise to the earthly one is said to be opened when one is acting from what is higher, that is, according to order - which also is "to turn the face toward." About the Babylonic confounding [of the lip] and the opening of the heavenly Paradise.

脚注:

1. The meaning is not that "material" is the wrong term, but it is being used in the sense of "an idea with man in the material world." -tr.

2. This paragraph and the first half of the next is emphasized in the original by the word "Obs." written four times in the margin.

  
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Thanks to the Academy of the New Church, and Bryn Athyn College, for the permission to use this translation.