44. Verses 24-25 And God said, Let the earth bring forth living creatures according to their kinds, beasts and creeping things and wild animals of the earth according to their kinds; and it was so. And God made wild animals of the earth according to their kinds, and beasts according to their kinds, and everything that creeps along the ground according to its kind; and God saw that it was good.

Man, like the earth, can produce nothing good unless the cognitions of faith have already been sown in him enabling him to know what to believe and do. It is the function of the understanding to hear the Word, and of the will to do it. A person who hears the Word and does not do it is one who claims to believe, but he does not live according to it. Such a person separates hearing and doing, and splits his mind in two directions; and by the Lord he is called 'a foolish man',

Everyone who hears My words and does them I liken to a wise man who built his house upon the rock; but everyone who hears My words and does them not I liken to a foolish man who built his house upon the sand. Matthew 7:24, 26.

Matters of the understanding, as has been shown, are meant by 'creeping things which the waters produce', and by 'birds over the earth and over the face ¹ of the expanse'. Matters of the will are here meant by 'living creatures which the earth brings forth', and by 'beasts and creeping things', and also by 'the wild animals of the earth'.

Imibhalo yaphansi:

2245. 'The men looked from there' means the Lord's thought from the Divine. This is clear from the meaning of 'looking from' as thinking, for 'seeing' in the internal sense, as in everyday speech, is understanding, since the understanding is internal sight, and thus 'looking from' means thinking, which is the activity of the internal sight or the understanding; and also from the meaning of 'the men' as the Divine. In various places in this chapter 'the men' are mentioned, and in various other places 'Jehovah' instead of 'the men'. When 'the men' is used the Trinity is meant, that is, the Divine itself, the Divine Human, and the [Holy] proceeding. The Lord's thought from this Divine is meant by the words 'the men looked from there'. That thought came from the Human joined to the Divine, which conjunction was dealt with at the start of this chapter; but the perception from which the thought stemmed came from the Divine, which explains why immediately afterwards in this same verse reference is made to Jehovah in the words 'he stood before Jehovah'. And when the Human had been joined to the Divine, the [Holy] proceeding was together with them as well.