The Word in the Old Testament⁶ contains secrets of heaven, and every single aspect of it has to do with the Lord,⁷ his heaven, the church, faith, and all the tenets of faith; but not a single person sees this in the letter. In the letter, or literal meaning, people see only that it deals for the most part with the external facts of the Jewish religion.

The truth is, however, that every part of the Old Testament holds an inner message.⁸ Except at a very few points, those inner depths never show on the surface. The exceptions are concepts that the Lord revealed and explained to the apostles, such as the fact that the sacrifices symbolize the Lord,⁹ and that the land of Canaan and Jerusalem symbolize heaven (which is why it is called the heavenly Canaan or Jerusalem [Galatians 4:26; Hebrews 11:16; 12:22; Revelation 21:2, 10]), as does Paradise.¹⁰

The Christian world, though, remains deeply ignorant of the fact that each and every detail down to the smallest—even down to the tiniest jot¹¹—enfolds and symbolizes spiritual and heavenly matters; and because it lacks such knowledge, it also lacks much interest in the Old Testament.

Still, Christians can come to a proper understanding if they reflect on a single notion: that since the Word is the Lord’s and comes from him, it could not possibly exist unless it held within it the kinds of things that have to do with heaven, the church, and faith. Otherwise it could not be called the Lord’s Word, nor could it be said to contain any life.¹² Where, after all, does life come from if not from what is living? That is, if not from the fact that every single thing in the Word relates to the Lord, who is truly life itself? Whatever does not look to him at some deeper level, then, is without life; in fact, if a single expression in the Word does not embody or reflect him in its own way, it is not divine.

Without this interior life, the Word in its letter is dead. It resembles a human being, in that a human has an outward self and an inward one, as the Christian world knows.¹³ The outer being, separated from the inner, is just a body and so is dead, but the inward being is what lives and allows the outward being to live.¹⁴ The inner being is a person’s soul.

In the same way, the letter of the Word by itself is a body without a soul.

The Word’s literal meaning alone, when it monopolizes our thinking, can never provide a view of the inner contents. Take for example this first chapter of Genesis. The literal meaning by itself offers no clue that it is speaking of anything but the world’s creation, the Garden of Eden (Paradise), and Adam, the first human ever created.¹⁵ Who supposes anything else?

The wisdom hidden in these details (and never before revealed) will be clear enough from what follows. The inner sense of the first chapter of Genesis deals in general with the process that creates us anew—that is to say, with regeneration—and in particular with the very earliest church;¹⁶ and it does so in such a way that not even the smallest syllable fails to represent, symbolize, and incorporate this meaning.¹⁷

But without the Lord’s aid not a soul can possibly see that this is the case. As a result, it is proper to reveal in these preliminaries that the Lord in his divine mercy has granted me the opportunity for several years now, without break or interruption, to keep company with spirits and angels, to hear them talking, and to speak with them in turn.¹⁸ Consequently I have been able to see and hear the most amazing things in the other life, which have never before come into people’s awareness or thought.

In that world I have been taught about the different kinds of spirits, the situation of souls after death, hell (or the regrettable state of the faithless), and heaven (or the blissful state of the faithful). In particular I have learned what is taught in the faith acknowledged by the whole of heaven. All of these topics will, with the Lord’s divine mercy, be explored further in what follows.

Genesis 1

1. In the beginning, God created heaven and earth.¹⁹

2. And the earth was void and emptiness; and there was darkness on the face²⁰ of the abyss. And the Spirit of God was constantly moving on the face of the water.

3. And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light.

4. And God saw the light, that it was good; and God made a distinction between light and darkness.

5. And God called the light day, and the darkness he called night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day.

6. And God said, “Let there be an expanse in the middle of the waters, and let it exist to make a distinction among the waters, in the waters.”

7. And God made the expanse, and he made a distinction between the waters that were under the expanse and the waters that were over the expanse; and so it was done.

8. And God called the expanse heaven. And there was evening and there was morning, the second day.

9. And God said, “Let the waters under heaven be gathered into one place, and let dry land appear,” and so it was done.

10. And God called the dry land earth, and the gathering of waters he called seas. And God saw that it was good.

11. And God said, “Let the earth cause the sprouting on the earth of the tender plant, of the plant bearing its seed, of the fruit tree making the fruit that holds its seed, each in the way of its kind,” and so it was done.

12. And the earth produced the tender plant, the plant bearing its seed in the way of its kind, and the tree making the fruit that held its seed in the way of its kind, and God saw that it was good.

13. And there was evening and there was morning, the third day.

14. And God said, “Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to make a distinction between day and night; and they will act as signals and will be used for seasons for both the days and the years.

15. And they will act as lights in the expanse of the heavens to shed light on the earth”; and so it was done.

16. And God made the two great lights: the greater light to rule by day and the smaller light to rule by night; and the stars.

17. And God placed them in the expanse of the heavens, to shed light on the earth,

18. and to rule during the day and during the night, and to make a distinction between light and darkness; and God saw that it was good.

19. And there was evening and there was morning, the fourth day.

20. And God said, “Let the waters cause the creeping animal—a living soul—to creep out. And let the bird flit over the land, over the face of the expanse of the heavens.”

21. And God created the big sea creatures, and every living, creeping soul that the waters caused to creep out, in all their kinds, and every bird on the wing, of every kind. And God saw that it was good.

22. And God blessed them, saying, “Reproduce and multiply and fill the water in the seas, and the birds will multiply on the land.”

23. And there was evening and there was morning, the fifth day.

24. And God said, “Let the earth produce each living soul according to its kind: the beast, and that which moves, and the wild animal of the earth, each according to its kind”; and so it was done.

25. And God made each wild animal of the earth according to its kind, and each beast according to its kind, and every animal creeping on the ground according to its kind; and God saw that it was good.

26. And God said, “Let us make a human in our image, after our likeness; and these²¹ will rule over the fish of the sea and over the bird in the heavens, and over the beast, and over all the earth, and over every creeping animal that creeps on the earth.”

27. And God created the human in his image; in God’s image he created them; male and female he created them.

28. And God blessed them, and God said to them, “Reproduce and multiply, and fill the earth and harness it, and rule over the fish of the sea and over the bird in the heavens and over every living animal creeping on the earth.”

29. And God said, “Here, now, I am giving you every seed-bearing plant on the face of all the earth and every tree that has fruit; the tree that produces seed will serve you for food.

30. And every wild animal of the earth and every bird in the heavens and every animal creeping on the earth, in which there is a living soul—every green plant will serve them for nourishment.” And so it was done.

31. And God saw all that he had done and, yes, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.

Summary

The six days or time periods, meaning so many consecutive stages in a person’s regeneration, are these, in outline:

The first stage is preliminary, extending from infancy to just before regeneration, and is called void, emptiness, and darkness. The first stirring, which is the Lord’s mercy, is the Spirit of God in constant motion on the face of the water.

In the second stage, a distinction is drawn between the things that are the Lord’s and those that are our own. The things that are the Lord’s are called a “remnant” in the Word.²² In this instance the “remnant” refers principally to religious knowledge acquired from early childhood on. This remnant is stored away, not to reappear until we arrive at such a stage.

At present the second stage rarely comes into play without trouble, misfortune, and grief, which enable bodily and worldly concerns—things that are our own—to fade away and in effect die out.²³ The things that belong to the outer self, then, are separated from those that belong to the inner self, the inner self containing the remnant that the Lord has put aside to await this time and this purpose.

The third stage is one of repentance. During this time, at the prompting of the inner self, we speak devoutly and reverently and yield a good harvest (acts of neighborly kindness, for instance). These effects are lifeless nonetheless, since we suppose that they come of our own doing. They are called the tender plant, then the seed-bearing plant, and lastly the fruit tree.

In the fourth stage, love stirs and faith enlightens us. Before this time we may have spoken devoutly and yielded a good harvest, but we did so in a state of trial and anguish, not at the call of faith and kindness. In consequence they are now kindled in our inner self and are called the two lights.

In the fifth stage, we speak with conviction and, in the process, strengthen ourselves in truth and goodness. The things we then produce have life in them and are called the fish of the sea and the birds in the heavens.

In the sixth stage, we act with conviction and therefore with love in speaking truth and doing good. What we then produce is called a living soul and a beast. Because we begin to act as much from love as from conviction, we become spiritual people, who are called [God’s] image.

In regard to our spiritual lives, we now find pleasure and nourishment in religious knowledge and acts of kindness; and these are called our food. In regard to our earthly lives, we still find pleasure and sustenance in things relating to our body and our senses, which cause strife until love takes charge and we develop a heavenly character.

Not everyone who undergoes regeneration reaches this stage. Some (the great majority, these days) arrive only at the first stage, some only at the second, some at the third, fourth, or fifth, very few at the sixth, and almost no one at the seventh.²⁴

Inner Meaning

From this point on, the term Lord is used in only one way: to refer to the Savior of the world, Jesus Christ; and the name “Lord” is used without any additions.

He is acknowledged and revered as Lord throughout heaven because he possesses all power in heaven and on earth.

He also commanded this when he said, “You address me as ‘Lord.’ You speak correctly, because so I am” (John 13:13). And his disciples called him Lord after the resurrection.²⁵

In the whole of heaven no one knows of any other Father than the Lord, since the Father and the Lord are one. As he himself said:

“I am the way and the truth and life.” Philip says, “Show us your Father.” Jesus says to him, “After all the time I’ve spent with you, don’t you know me, Philip? Whoever has seen me has seen my Father. How then can you say, ‘Show us your Father’? Don’t you believe that I am in my Father and my Father is in me? Believe me, that I am in my Father and my Father is in me.” (John 14:6, 8, 9, 10, 11)

Genesis 1:1. In the beginning, God created heaven and earth.

The word beginning is being used for the very earliest times. The prophets frequently call them “the days of old.”²⁶

“The beginning” includes the first period of regeneration too, as that is when people are being born anew and receiving life. Because of this, regeneration itself is called our new creation [2 Corinthians 5:17; Galatians 6:15]. Almost everywhere in the prophetic books, the words creating, forming, and making stand for regenerating, though with differences.²⁷ In Isaiah, for example:

All have been called by my name, and I have created them for my glory; I have formed them; yes, I have made them. (Isaiah 43:7)

This is why the Lord is called Redeemer, One-Who-Forms-from-the-Womb, Maker, and Creator, as in the same prophet:

I am Jehovah,²⁸ your Holy One, the Creator of Israel, your Monarch. (Isaiah 43:15)

In David:²⁹

The people created will praise Jah.³⁰ (Psalms 102:18)

In the same author:

You send out your spirit—they will continue to be created—and you renew the face of the ground.³¹ (Psalms 104:30)

Heaven, or the sky, symbolizes the inner self, and the earth, before regeneration occurs, symbolizes the outer self, as may be seen below [§§17, 24:3, 27].

Genesis 1:2. And the earth was void and emptiness, and there was darkness on the face of the abyss, and the Spirit of God was constantly moving on the face of the water.

Before regeneration a person is called the void, empty earth, and also soil in which no seed of goodness or truth has been planted.³² Void refers to an absence of goodness and empty to an absence of truth. The result is darkness, in which a person is oblivious to or ignorant of anything having to do with faith in the Lord and consequently with a spiritual or heavenly life. The Lord portrays such a person this way in Jeremiah:

My people are dense; they do not know me. They are stupid children, without understanding. They are wise in doing evil but do not know how to do good. I looked at the earth, and there—void and emptiness; and to the heavens, and these had no light. (Jeremiah 4:22, 23, 25)

The face of the abyss means our cravings and the falsities these give rise to; we are wholly made up of cravings and falsities and wholly surrounded by them. Because no ray of light is in us, we are like an abyss, or something disorganized and dim.

Many passages in the Word also call such people abysses and sea depths, which are drained (that is, devastated) before a person is regenerated. In Isaiah, for instance:

Wake up, as in the days of old, the generations of eternity! Are you not draining the sea, the waters of the great abyss, and making the depths of the sea a path for the redeemed to cross? May those ransomed by Jehovah return! (Isaiah 51:9, 10, 11)

An individual of this type, observed from heaven, looks like a dark mass with no life at all to it.³³

The same words involve an individual’s overall spiritual devastation—a preliminary step to regeneration.³⁴ (The prophets have much more to say about it.)³⁵ Before we can learn what is true and be affected by what is good, the things that stand in the way and resist have to be put aside. The old self must die before the new self can be conceived.³⁶

The Spirit of God stands for the Lord’s mercy, which is portrayed as moving constantly, like a hen brooding over her eggs. What is being brooded over in this instance is what the Lord stores away in us, which throughout the Word is called “a remnant” [or “survivors”].³⁷ It is a knowledge of truth and goodness, which can never emerge into the light of day until our outer nature has been devastated. Such knowledge is here called the face of the water.

Genesis 1:3. And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light.

The first step is taken when we begin to realize that goodness and truth are something transcendent.

People who focus exclusively on externals do not even know what is good or what is true; everything connected with self-love and love of worldly advantages³⁸ they consider good, and anything that promotes those two loves they consider true. They are unaware that such “goodness” is evil and such “truth” false.

When we are conceived anew, however, we first begin to be aware that our “good” is not good. And as we advance further into the light, it dawns on us that the Lord exists and that he is goodness and truth itself.

The Lord says in John that we need to know of his existence:

Unless you believe that I am, you will die in your sins. (John 8:24)

We need to know too that the Lord is goodness itself, or life, and truth itself, or light, and consequently that nothing good or true exists that does not come from him. This is also found in John:

In the beginning there was the Word, and the Word was present with God, and the Word was God. Everything was made by him, and nothing that was made was made without him. In him was life, and the life was the light of humankind; but the light appears in the darkness. He was the true light that shines on every person coming into the world. (John 1:1, 3, 4, [5,] 9)

Genesis 1:4, 5. And God saw the light, that it was good, and God made a distinction between light and darkness. And God called the light day, and the darkness he called night.

The light is said to be good because it is from the Lord, who is goodness itself.

The darkness is whatever looked like light to us before our new conception and birth, because we saw evil as good and falsity as truth; but it is actually darkness—our lingering sense of self-sufficiency.

Absolutely everything that is the Lord’s is compared to the day, because it belongs to the light, and everything that is our own is compared to the night, because it belongs to the darkness. The Word draws this comparison in quite a few places.³⁹

Genesis 1:5. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day.

From this we now see what evening and morning mean. Evening is every preliminary stage, because such stages are marked by shadow, or by falsity and an absence of faith. Morning is all later stages, because these are marked by light, or by truth and religious knowledge.

Evening stands in general for everything that is our own, while morning stands for everything of the Lord’s. As David says, for example:

The Spirit of Jehovah has spoken in me and his words are on my tongue. The God of Israel has said, the rock of Israel has spoken to me. He is like the morning light when the sun rises, like a morning when there are no clouds, when because of the brightness, because of the rain, the tender grass springs from the earth. (2 Samuel 23:2, 3, 4)

Since evening is when there is no faith and morning is when there is faith, the Lord’s coming into the world is called morning. The period in which he came, being a time of no faith, is called evening. In Daniel:

The Holy One said to me, “Up till [the day’s second] evening, when it becomes morning,⁴⁰ two thousand and three hundred times.” (Daniel 8:14, 26)

Morning in the Word is similarly taken to mean every coming of the Lord, so that it is a word for being created anew.

Nothing is more common in the Word than for a day to be understood as meaning the times, as in Isaiah:

The day of Jehovah is near. Look—the day of Jehovah is coming! I will shake heaven, and the earth will tremble right out of its place, on the day when my anger blazes up. The time of his coming is near, and its days⁴¹ will not be postponed. (Isaiah 13:6, 9, 13, 22)

In the same prophet:

In the days of old she was old. It will happen on that day that Tyre will be forgotten for seventy years, corresponding to the days of one king. (Isaiah 23:7, 15)

Because a day stands for a time period, it is also taken to mean the state we are in during that period, as in Jeremiah:

Doom to us! For the day has faded, for the shadows of evening have lengthened. (Jeremiah 6:4)

In the same prophet:

If you nullify my compact with the day and my compact with the night, so that there is no daytime or night at their times . . . (Jeremiah 33:20, 25)

And again:

Renew our days as in ancient times. (Lamentations 5:21)⁴²

Genesis 1:6. And God said, “Let there be an expanse in the middle of the waters, and let it exist to make a distinction among the waters, in the waters.”

The next step occurs after the Spirit of God—the Lord’s mercy—brings out into daylight the knowledge of truth and goodness and provides the first glimmering that the Lord exists, that he is goodness and truth itself, and that nothing is good or true except what comes from him. The Spirit of God then makes a distinction between the inner and the outer being, and between the religious knowledge we possess in our inner selves and the secular knowledge belonging to our outer selves.

The inner self is called the expanse, the knowledge in the inner self is called the waters over the expanse, and the facts belonging to the outer self are called the waters under the expanse.

[2] Before we are reborn, we do not know even that an inner being exists, let alone what it is, imagining there is no difference between the two selves. This is because we are absorbed by bodily and worldly interests and merge the concerns of the inner being with those interests. Out of distinct and separate planes we make one dim, confused whole.

Therefore this verse first says that there should be an expanse in the middle of the waters, then that it should exist to make a distinction “among the waters, in the waters,” but not that it should make a distinction between one set of waters and another. The next verse says that.

[3] Genesis 1:7, 8. And God made the expanse, and he made a distinction between the waters that were under the expanse and the waters that were over the expanse, and so it was done; and God called the expanse heaven.

The second thing we begin to notice while being reborn, then, is that the inner self exists. We become aware that the attributes of the inner self are good feelings and true ideas, which are the Lord’s alone.

While we are being reborn, our outer self is such that it still believes we are acting on our own when we do what is good and speaking on our own when we speak what is true. The Lord uses those things—allowing them to seem like our own, since such is our mind-set—to lead us to doing what is good and speaking what is true. Consequently we first learn to distinguish what is under the expanse; only then do we learn to distinguish what is over the expanse.

Another secret from heaven is that the Lord leads us by means of things that really are our own—both the illusions of our senses and our cravings—but diverts us toward things that are true and good. So every single moment of regeneration carries us forward from evening to morning, just as it takes us from the outer self to the inner, or from earth to heaven. This is why the expanse (the inner self) is now called heaven.

Spreading out the earth⁴³ and stretching out the heavens is a customary formula used by the prophets when they speak of our regeneration. In Isaiah, for example:

This is what Jehovah has said, your Redeemer and the one who formed you from the womb: “I am Jehovah, making all things, stretching the heavens out on my own and spreading the earth out by myself.” (Isaiah 44:24)

Again, where the Lord’s Coming is spoken of openly:

A crushed reed he does not break, and smoldering flax he does not quench; he propels judgment toward truth. [In other words, he does not break our illusions or extinguish our cravings but bends them toward truth and goodness. It continues:]⁴⁴ God Jehovah creates the heavens and stretches them out. He spreads out the earth and the things it produces. He gives a soul to the people on it and spirit to everyone walking on it. (Isaiah 42:3, 4, 5)⁴⁵

Several other places could be cited as well.⁴⁶

Genesis 1:8. And there was evening and there was morning, the second day.

The meanings of evening, morning, and day are explained above at verse 5 [§§22–23].

Genesis 1:9. And God said, “Let the waters under heaven be gathered into one place, and let dry land appear”; and so it was done.

When we learn that we have an inner self and an outer, and that truth and goodness come from the inner self—or rather from the Lord by way of the inner self into the outer, even though this is contrary to appearances—this information, this knowledge of truth and goodness, is stored away in our memory. The knowledge takes its place among the secular facts we have learned, because anything instilled in our outward memory, whether earthly, spiritual, or heavenly, lodges there as a fact, and from there the Lord draws on it.

This knowledge is the waters gathered into one place and named seas. The outer being itself, on the other hand, is called dry land. Immediately afterward it is called earth, as the next verse shows.

Genesis 1:10. And God called the dry land earth, and the gathering of waters he called seas; and God saw that it was good.

To find waters symbolizing religious and secular knowledge, and seas symbolizing a body of such knowledge, is quite common in the Word. In Isaiah:

The earth will be full with the awareness of Jehovah, like the waters covering the sea. (Isaiah 11:9)

In the same prophet, where both kinds of knowledge are portrayed as lacking:

The water will disappear from the sea, the river will drain away and dry up, and the streams will recede. (Isaiah 19:5, 6)

In Haggai, where a new church is the subject:

I am shaking the heavens and the earth, and the sea and the dry land; and I will shake all the nations, and those who are the desire of every nation will come, and I will fill this House⁴⁷ with glory. (Haggai 2:6, 7)

And in Zechariah, on the regenerating individual:

That will be a single day; it is known to Jehovah; it is not day or night. And it will happen that at the time of evening there will be light. And it will happen on that day that living water will go out from Jerusalem, part of it to the eastern sea and part of it to the western sea.⁴⁸ (Zechariah 14:7, 8)

In a passage in David depicting a devastated person who is being reborn and will come to revere the Lord:

Jehovah does not despise his prisoners; the heavens and the earth, the seas and every creeping thing in them will praise him. (Psalms 69:33, 34)

In the following passage in Zechariah, the earth symbolizes that which receives something put into it:

Jehovah is stretching out the heavens and founding the earth and forming the human spirit in the middle of it. (Zechariah 12:1)

Genesis 1:11, 12. And God said, “Let the earth cause the sprouting on the earth of the tender plant, of the plant bearing its seed, of the fruit tree making the fruit that holds its seed, each in the way of its kind”; and so it was done. And the earth produced the tender plant, the plant bearing its seed in the way of its kind, and the tree making the fruit that held its seed in the way of its kind. And God saw that it was good.

When the earth (a person) is so well prepared as to be able to accept heavenly seed from the Lord and to produce good and truth in some degree, that is the time when the Lord first causes the sprouting of something tender, called the tender plant or grass. Next he stimulates something more useful that reseeds itself—the plant bearing its seed. Finally he germinates something good, which reproduces fruitfully—the tree making the fruit that holds its seed, each of these in the way of its kind.

During regeneration we naturally suppose at first that the good we do and the truth we speak come from ourselves, when the reality is that all good and truth come from the Lord. If we imagine they come from ourselves, then, we are not yet in possession of the life force belonging to true faith (although we can receive it later). We cannot believe yet that they come from the Lord, because we are being prepared to receive the living power of faith. This stage is represented in the story by things that have no living soul; animate creatures represent the stage of living faith to come.

[2] The Lord is the sower of seeds, the seed is his Word, and the earth is the human being, as he saw fit to say in Matthew 13:19–23, 37, 38, 39; Mark 4:14–20; and Luke 8:11–15. A similar description:

So God’s kingdom is like one who tosses seed into the earth and sleeps and rises night and day, and the seed sprouts and grows; how it happens, the person does not know. For the earth bears fruit readily—first a shoot, then an ear, then the full grain in the ear. (Mark 4:26, 27, 28)

“God’s kingdom” in its broadest sense means the whole of heaven. Less broadly it means the Lord’s true church. In its narrow sense it refers to everyone with true faith, which is to say, all who become reborn by living out their faith. Each of these people is also called a heaven (since they have heaven in them) and God’s kingdom (since they have God’s kingdom in them). The Lord himself teaches this in Luke:

Jesus was asked by the Pharisees, “When is God’s kingdom coming?” He answered them and said, “God’s kingdom does not come in an observable way, nor will they say, ‘Look here!’ or ‘Look there!’ because—look!—God’s kingdom is within you.” (Luke 17:20, 21)

This is the third step in our regeneration and the stage at which we repent. The process continues to advance from shadow to light, from evening to morning, and so it says:

[3] Genesis 1:13. And there was evening and there was morning, the third day.

Genesis 1:14, 15, 16, 17. And God said, “Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to make a distinction between day and night; and they will act as signals and will be used for seasons for both the days and the years. And they will be lights in the expanse of the heavens, to shed light on the earth,” and so it was done. And God made two great lights: the greater light to rule by day and the smaller light to rule by night; and the stars. And God placed them in the expanse of the heavens, to shed light on the earth.

We cannot understand the identity of these great lights very well unless we first know what the essence of faith is and how it develops in those who are being created anew.

The actual essence and life of faith is the Lord alone. No one who lacks faith in the Lord can have life, as he himself said in John:

Those who believe in the Son have eternal life, but those who do not believe in the Son will not see life; instead, God’s anger will rest on them. (John 3:36)

[2] The progress of faith in those who are being created anew is as follows. Initially such people are without any life, as no life exists in evil or falsity, only in goodness and truth. Afterward they receive life from the Lord through faith. The first form of faith to bring life is a memorized thing—a matter of fact. The next is faith in the intellect—faith truly understood. The last is faith in the heart, which is faith born of love, or saving faith.

In verses 3–13 the things that had no living soul represent factual faith and faith truly understood. Faith brought alive by love, however, is represented by the animate creatures in verses 20–25. Consequently this is the point at which love and the faith that rises out of it are first dealt with, and they are called lights. Love is the greater light that rules by day; faith springing from love is the smaller light that rules by night.⁴⁹ And because they must unite as one, the verb used with “lights” is singular, “let it be” rather than “let them be.”⁵⁰

[3] Love and faith work the same way in our inner being as warmth and light work in our outer flesh and are therefore represented by warmth and light. This is why the lights are said to be placed in the expanse of the heavens, or our inner being, the greater light in our will and the smaller in our intellect.⁵¹ But they only seem to be present there, just as the light of the sun only appears to be in physical objects. It is the Lord’s mercy alone that stirs our will with love and our intellect with truth or faith.

The fact that the great lights symbolize love and faith and that they are named sun, moon, and stars can be seen in many places in the prophets. In Ezekiel, for instance:

When I blot you out I will cover the heavens and black out their stars; the sun I will cover with a cloud, and the moon will not make its light shine. All the lamps of light in the heavens I will black out above you, and I will bring shadow over your land.⁵² (Ezekiel 32:7, 8)

This passage is directed at Pharaoh and the Egyptians. In the Word, these people stand for sensory evidence and factual information, and the idea here is that they used both things to blot out love and faith. In Isaiah:

The day of Jehovah [comes] to make the earth a desolation, since neither the stars of the heavens nor their Orions⁵³ will shine their light. The sun has been shadowed over in its emergence, and the moon will not radiate its light. (Isaiah 13:9, 10)

In Joel:

The day of Jehovah has come, a day of shadow and darkness. Before him the earth trembles, the heavens shake, the sun and moon turn black, and the stars hold back their rays. (Joel 2:1, 2, 10)

[2] The following passage in Isaiah discusses the Lord’s Coming and the light brought to the nations—in other words, a new church, and specifically the individuals who are in shadow but welcome the light and are being reborn.

Rise, shine, because your light has come! Look—shadows cover the earth, and darkness, the peoples. And Jehovah will dawn above you; and the nations will walk toward your light, and monarchs, toward the brightness of your rising. Jehovah will become an eternal light to you. No longer will your sun set, and your moon will not withdraw, because Jehovah will become an eternal light to you. (Isaiah 60:1, 2, 3, 19, 20)

In David:

Jehovah makes the heavens with understanding; he spreads the earth out on the waters; he makes the great lights—the sun to rule during the day and the moon and stars to rule during the night. (Psalms 136:5, 6, 7, 8, 9)

In the same author:

Give glory to Jehovah, sun and moon! Give glory to him, all you shining stars! Give glory to him, heavens of heavens and waters above the heavens! (Psalms 148:3, 4)

In all these places the sources of light symbolize love and faith.

[3] Because lights represented and symbolized love for and faith in the Lord, the Jewish church⁵⁴ was commanded to keep a light burning perpetually, from evening to morning, since every activity that was required of that church represented the Lord. The command for the perpetual light was as follows:

Command the children of Israel to take oil for the light, to make [the fire of] the lamp go up continually. In the meeting tent, outside the veil that is by [the ark of] the testimony, Aaron and his sons shall arrange it before Jehovah, from evening till morning. (Exodus 27:20, 21)

This symbolizes love and faith, which the Lord kindles and causes to shine in our inner self, and through our inner into our outer self, as will be shown in its proper place [§9783], with the Lord’s divine mercy.

Love and faith are first called the great lights, then love is called the greater light and faith the smaller light. It says that love will rule during the day and that faith will rule during the night. Because this information is unknown and less accessible than ever at this time—the end of an era—the Lord in his divine mercy has allowed me to lay open the true situation.

It is especially well hidden in these final days because the close of the age has arrived and almost no love exists, consequently almost no faith.⁵⁵ The Lord himself predicted this event in words recorded in the Gospels:

The sun will go dark, and the moon will not shed light, and the stars will fall down from the sky, and the powers of the heavens will be shaken. (Matthew 24:29)

The sun here means love, which has gone dark. The moon means faith, which is not shedding light. The stars mean religious concepts (the powers and forces of the heavens), which are falling down from heaven.

[2] The earliest church acknowledged no faith besides love itself. Heavenly angels⁵⁶ too have no idea what faith is if it is not a matter of love. The entirety of heaven gives itself over to love, because no other kind of life than that of love exists in the heavens. Love is the source of all their happiness, which is so immense that not a bit of it can be put into words or grasped in any way by the human mind.

People who dwell in love do love the Lord with all their heart, but they know, say, and perceive that all love comes from the Lord and from nowhere else, as does all life (which is the product of love alone) and so all happiness. Not the smallest measure of love, life, or happiness do they claim to possess on their own.

In the Lord’s transfiguration, the great light—the sun—represented the fact that he is the source of all love, since

His face shone like the sun, while his clothes became like the light. (Matthew 17:2)

The face symbolizes the deepest levels of being, while clothes symbolize the things that issue from those levels. So the sun (love) means the Lord’s divinity, and light (the wisdom that rises out of love), his humanity.

Anyone can see perfectly well that no hint of life ever exists without some kind of love and that no trace of joy ever exists unless it results from love. The nature of the love determines the nature of the life and of the joy.

If you were to take the things you love—the things you long for (since longings are bound up with love)—and set them aside, your thought processes would come to an immediate halt and you would be like a corpse. I have learned this through experience.

Self-love and materialism produce an imitation of life and an imitation of joy, but since they are diametrically opposed to genuine love—that is, loving the Lord above all and loving our neighbor as ourselves—it stands to reason that they are not forms of love but of hatred. Notice that the more we love ourselves and worldly goods, the more we hate our neighbor and therefore the Lord.

Genuine love, then, is love for the Lord, and genuine life is a life of love received from him. True joy is the joy of that life.

Only one genuine love can exist, so only one genuine life can exist, and it gives rise to true joy and happiness, like that felt by angels in heaven.

Love and faith can never be separated, because they make a single unit. This is why the sources of light when first mentioned are treated as grammatically singular in the statement, “Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens.”⁵⁷ Let me report some surprising facts in this connection.

Because the Lord gives heavenly angels this kind of love, love reveals all religious knowledge to them. Love also gives them such a living and shining intelligence that it can hardly be described.

For spirits who learn the doctrinal tenets of faith but lack love, on the other hand, life is so chill and the light so dim that they cannot even approach the near side of the threshold to heaven’s entrance hall without fleeing in retreat.

Some say that they had believed in the Lord; but in actuality they had not lived as he taught. The Lord speaks of them this way in Matthew:

Not everyone saying “Lord! Lord!” to me will enter the kingdom of the heavens, but the one doing my will. Many will say to me on that day, “Lord! Lord! Haven’t we prophesied in your name?” (Matthew 7:21, 22)

See also what follows there, up to the end of Matthew 7.

[2] All this makes it clear that people who have love also have faith and consequently heavenly life. The same cannot be said of those who claim to have faith but do not lead a loving life.

A life of faith without love is like sunlight without warmth—the type of light that occurs in winter, when nothing grows and everything droops and dies. Faith rising out of love, on the contrary, is like light from the sun in spring, when everything grows and flourishes. Warmth from the sun is the fertile agent. The same is true in spiritual and heavenly affairs, which are typically represented in the Word by objects found in nature and human culture.

Nonbelief and belief without love are in fact compared to winter by the Lord in Mark where he made predictions concerning the close of the age:

Pray that your flight not occur in winter, as those will be days of distress. (Mark 13:18, 19)

The “flight” refers to the final days and to an individual’s final days before death as well. “Winter” is a life devoid of love. The “days of distress” are the person’s wretched condition in the other life.

Humans have two basic faculties: will and intellect. When the will regulates the intellect, the two together make one mind and as a result one life; under those circumstances, what we will and do is also what we think and intend. When the intellect is at odds with the will, though, as when we act in a way that contradicts what we claim to believe, our single mind is torn in two. One part wants to rise up to heaven while the other leans toward hell. And since the will drives everything, we would rush into hell heart and soul if the Lord did not take pity on us.

People who have separated faith from love do not even know what faith is. When they try to picture it, some see it merely as thought. Some view it only as thoughts about the Lord. A few equate it with the teachings of faith.

But faith is more than the knowledge and acknowledgment of all that is encompassed in the teachings of faith. First and foremost it is obedience to everything that faith teaches; and the primary thing faith teaches and requires our obedience to is love for the Lord and love for our neighbor. No one who lacks this possesses faith. The Lord teaches this so clearly in Mark that no one can doubt it:

The first of all the commandments is “Listen, Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord. Therefore you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your powers.” This is the first commandment. A second, similar one, of course, is this: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” There is no other commandment greater than these. (Mark 12:28–34)

In Matthew he calls the former the first and great commandment and says that the Law and the Prophets depend on these commandments (Matthew 22:35–40). “The Law and the Prophets” are the teachings of faith, all-inclusively, and the whole Word.⁵⁸

The words the lights will act as signals and will be used for seasons both for the days and for the years contain more hidden information than can be spelled out in the present work, even though none of it appears in the literal meaning. The only thing to be said at this time is that spiritual and heavenly things—as a group and individually—go through cycles, for which the daily and yearly cycles are metaphors. The daily cycle begins in the morning, extends to midday, then to evening, and through night to morning. The corresponding annual cycle begins with spring, extends to summer, then to fall, and through winter to spring.

These changes create changes in temperature and light and in the earth’s fertility, which are used as metaphors for changes in spiritual and heavenly conditions. Without change and variation, life would be monotonous and consequently lifeless. There would be no recognition or differentiation of goodness and truth, let alone any awareness of them.

The celestial cycles are called “statutes” in the prophets, as in Jeremiah:

The word spoken by Jehovah, who gives the sun as light for the day, the statutes of moon and stars as light for the night: “These statutes will not depart from before me.” (Jeremiah 31:35, 36)

And in the same prophet:

This is what Jehovah has said: “If my compact with day and night should cease, if I should cease to set the statutes of heaven and earth . . .” (Jeremiah 33:25)

But the subject will be explored further at Genesis 8:22 [§§933–936], the Lord’s divine mercy permitting.

Genesis 1:18. . . .⁵⁹ and to rule during the day and during the night, and to make a distinction between light and darkness; and God saw that it was good.

Day means goodness and night evil, so in common parlance the good things people do are associated with the day, while the bad things they do are called deeds of the night.

Light means truth and darkness falsity, as the Lord says:

People loved darkness more than light. One who does the truth comes to the light. (John 3:19–21)

Genesis 1:19. And there was evening and there was morning, the fourth day.

Genesis 1:20. And God said, “Let the waters cause the creeping animal—a living soul—to creep out. And let the bird flit over the land, over the face of the expanse of the heavens.”

After the great lights are kindled and placed in the inner self, and the outer self is receiving light from them, the time arrives when we first start to live. Earlier, we can hardly be said to have been alive, thinking as we did that the good we perform and the truth we speak originate in ourselves. On our own we are dead and have nothing but evil and falsity inside, with the result that nothing we produce from ourselves has life. So true is this that by our own power we cannot do anything good—at least not anything inherently good.

From the doctrine taught by faith, anyone can see that we cannot so much as think a good thought or will a good result or consequently do a good deed except through the Lord’s power. After all, in Matthew the Lord says:

The one who sows good seed is the Son of Humankind.⁶⁰ (Matthew 13:37)

Good cannot come from anywhere but this same unique source, as he also says:

Nobody is good except the one God. (Luke 18:19)

[2] Still, when the Lord brings us back to life, or regenerates us, he at first allows us to harbor these mistaken ideas. At that stage we cannot view the situation in any other way. Neither can we be led in any other way to believe and then perceive that everything good and true comes from the Lord alone.

As long as our thinking ran along these lines, the truth and goodness we possessed were equated with a tender plant or grass, next with a plant bearing seed, then with a fruit tree, none of which has a living soul. Now, when love and faith have brought us to life and we believe that the Lord brings about all the good we do and the truth we speak, we are compared initially to creeping animals of the water and birds flitting over the land and later to beasts. All these are animate and are called living souls.

Notes

Notes to the Author’s Table of Contents

¹ The Latin word here translated “secrets” is arcana, which generally refers to sacred secrets or mysteries; the English equivalent, “arcana,” has a similar sense, but has come to have a more limited use. Most previous translations of this work retained the Latin title Arcana Coelestia, literally, “heavenly arcana.” [RS]

² Although the use of the term “the Word” for the Bible was common in Swedenborg’s time, his conception of “the Word” does not include all the books of which the Bible is generally understood to be composed. He generally limits his definition of “the Word” to those parts of Scripture that he believes to have an inner meaning throughout: the Pentateuch (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy), the historical books (Joshua, Judges, 1 and 2 Samuel, 1 and 2 Kings), the Psalms, the prophets (Isaiah, Jeremiah, Lamentations, Ezekiel, Daniel, Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi), the Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, John), and Revelation. He thus omits certain parts of the Hebrew Scriptures, such as 1 and 2 Chronicles, Ruth, Proverbs, and the Song of Solomon, as well as the writings of the apostles in the Greek Scriptures. For a discussion of his reasons for these omissions, see his letter to his friend Gabriel Beyer (1720–1779) dated April 15, 1766, cited in Acton 1948–1955, 612–613, and quoted in the introduction to this volume, pages 86–87. On the use of the term “the Lord” in Swedenborg’s writings, see note 7. [GFD, RS]

³ Swedenborg describes the next world as being divided into three major areas: heaven, hell, and a middle region called the world of spirits (see §5852, for example). A fourth area could be added: the “underground realm” (see note 169). [LHC] In his 1758 work Heaven and Hell 421, Swedenborg says, “The world of spirits is neither heaven nor hell but a place or state between the two. It is where we first arrive after death, being in due time either raised into heaven or cast into hell from it depending on our life in this world.”(The translations from Heaven and Hell quoted in these notes are those of George F. Dole.) Angels form an extremely important part of Swedenborg’s metaphysical system. Key aspects of his thought in this regard are that angels are persons in the strict sense, not abstract forces or entities. They have bodies as we do, and even wear clothing and live in houses in heaven (Heaven and Hell 73–77, 177–190). Moreover, angels were not originally created as such: every angel was at one point a person alive either on this earth or on some other planet (see his 1758 work Other Planets 1). Much of Swedenborg’s information about the unseen worlds is reported in the form of conversations with angels. [RS]

⁴ Swedenborg later came to refer to these “accounts of the wonders . . . seen in the world of spirits and in the heaven of angels” with the Latin term memorabilia. Traditionally they have been referred to in English as either “memorabilia” or “memorable relations”; in the annotations to this edition they are called “accounts of memorable occurrences,” or some variation of that term. (Strictly speaking, the first separate “memorable occurrences” distinctly labeled in small caps in the first editions appeared in Swedenborg’s 1766 work Revelation Unveiled, but the term has since been applied to the shorter accounts embedded in his previous material.) Because of their basis in Swedenborg’s spiritual experiences, these accounts are also sometimes referred to as “experiential” material (as opposed to doctrinal or exegetical). Swedenborg apparently saw the experiential material in the Secrets of Heaven volumes as the reader’s easiest avenue of access to the work; in order to distinguish it, he had it printed in italics, in slightly larger type, and with more space between the lines. In this table of experiential material in the first volume, the first edition (the Latin edition of 1749) cites the passages by page number, an odd exception to Swedenborg’s customary use of section numbers to refer to his text. He may have felt that the use of page numbers would make these topics more accessible to the browsing reader. The corresponding section numbers have been substituted in this edition. It should be noted that this first volume of the present edition contains about half the material in the first volume of Swedenborg’s edition; so that when he here refers to “accounts of the wonders” (Latin mirabilia) appearing “in this first volume,” the reader must understand that the passages cited after §946 appear now in volume 2. The same applies to the section numbers cited just above in the text. [SS]

⁵ Swedenborg describes heaven as having the form of a single human being, which he calls maximus homo, here translated “universal human.” See §§550, 911:2, and the sections referred to here by Swedenborg. See also note 209 below. [LHC]

Notes to Genesis Chapter 1, §§1–66

⁶ (in §1). This edition follows Swedenborg’s practice of referring to the Hebrew Scriptures as the Old Testament and the Greek Scriptures as the New Testament. On the meaning of the term “the Word,” see note 2. [JSR]

⁷ (in §1). “The Lord” here refers to Jesus Christ. Although Swedenborg’s theology is thoroughly monotheistic, to denote God he uses many names and terms from philosophical and biblical backgrounds (God, the Divine Being, the Deity, the Divine Human, the One, the Infinite, the First, the Creator, the Redeemer, the Savior, Jehovah, God Shaddai, and many more). The most frequently occurring term, however, is “the Lord” (Latin Dominus). Here and generally throughout, “the Lord” refers to Jesus Christ as the visible manifestation of the one and only God. See §14. For a brief summary of Swedenborg’s theology, see True Christianity 2–3. [JSR, RS]

⁸ (in §1). The idea that Scripture possesses an inner meaning is an ancient one. Some of the earliest interpretations of the Bible using such a method come from Philo of Alexandria (also known as Philo Judaeus; about 15 B.C.E.–50 C.E.), whose works interpret Scripture in the light of Greek philosophy. The most significant accounts of the Bible’s inner meaning in early Christianity come from the church fathers Clement of Alexandria (about 150–between 211 and 215 C.E.) and Origen (about 185–about 254 C.E.). Origen wrote, “Among those narratives which appear to be recorded literally there are inserted and interwoven others which cannot be accepted as history but which contain a spiritual meaning” (Origen, On First Principles, book 4, chapter 3, in Origen 1966, 290). For a discussion of the similarities between Swedenborg’s perspective on the Bible and those of the church fathers, see Tulk 1994, 19–33. Another influential exposition of the inner meaning of Genesis appears in the compendium of Jewish mystical knowledge known as the Sefer ha-Zohar, or “Book of Splendor,” attributed to the circle of Rabbi Moses de Leon (about 1250–1305) in thirteenth-century Spain. The Zohar is the principal work of the Kabbala, the mystical doctrine of Judaism. According to Kabbalistic teaching, there are four levels of meaning to Scripture, ranging from the literal to the mystical (see Matt 2004 and Scholem 1974, 174). Swedenborg’s familiarity with these earlier sources is a matter of scholarly debate, but it is generally acknowledged that he had at least a broad conception of them, and indeed his interpretations often accord with them (see Lamm [1915] 2000, 55–58, 227–231). On the other hand, although he himself does occasionally show awareness of theories of an inner meaning much like his own (see, for example, §606), he repeatedly insists that his theology is derived from personal spiritual experience. [RS]

⁹ (in §1). For instances in which the inner meaning of sacrifices is explained, see Matthew 26:26–28, Mark 14:22–24, and Luke 22:19–20, where Jesus refers to the bread and wine of the Passover meal as his body and blood. He also uses the term “blood of the covenant,” which recalls a sacrifice offered by Moses just after he received the Ten Commandments, as described in Exodus 24:4–8. See also Ephesians 5:2; Hebrews 7:27; 9:26. [LHC, JLO] The Epistle to the Hebrews draws an elaborate analogy between the sacrifices ordained by the Mosaic Law and Christ’s sacrifice, adding that the Law is “a shadow of good things to come,” that is, of Christ’s coming; see Hebrews 9; 10:1. (The term “the Law,” so capitalized, refers loosely to the books of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, and in particular to the injunctions of divine worship laid on the Jewish people there.) [RS]

¹⁰ (in §1). See Luke 23:43, where Jesus on the cross promises a criminal who is also being executed, “Today you will be with me in Paradise.” See also Revelation 2:7. [LHC, JLO] The word Paradise comes from a Persian word meaning “park” or “enclosure”; it appears in Hebrew as seD.r;P (pardēs) and in Greek as paravdeiso" (parádeisos). Early on, however, it came to serve as a metaphor for heaven. [RS]

¹¹ (in §2). The phrase “down to the tiniest jot” means down to the smallest letter, which in the Hebrew alphabet is yod (y). The word “jot” comes from the name of the Greek letter iota, which in turn comes from the same source as yod. [LHC]

¹² (in §2). Here Swedenborg appears to be thinking of John 1:4: “In it [the Word] there was life, and that life was the light for humankind.” [RS]

¹³ (in §3). Swedenborg is not necessarily limiting his conception of the “Christian world” to Christianity proper. In §54 of his 1763 work Sacred Scripture, he uses the term to include not only the Reformed Church (that is, Calvinists) and Catholics but Jews as well. See also note 14. [RS, GFD]

¹⁴ (in §3). Swedenborg here alludes to a dynamic that infuses his work, as it does practically all of Christianity from its earliest origins: the contrast between the “outer”—equated with the purely physical, which, taken on its own, is lifeless—and the “inner,” which is what gives life. This contrast between the inner self and the outer self is a common theme in the Christian tradition, going back to Jesus himself, who strongly emphasized the difference between external appearances of piety and the inner motivation. See the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector, Luke 18:10–14; also Matthew 23:27: “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, because you make yourselves like bleached tombs, which do indeed look beautiful from the outside, but inside are full of the bones of the dead and uncleanness of every kind.” The dynamic can be seen in Paul’s Epistles as well: see 2 Corinthians 4:16: “Although our outer self is perishing, our inner self is nevertheless being renewed day by day.” Similarly, Paul contrasts those who are Jews “outwardly” with those who are Jews “inwardly”; the former have a circumcision that is “outward in the flesh,” while the latter have one “of the heart, in the spirit, and not in the letter” (Romans 2:28–29). [RS]

¹⁵ (in §4). The creation story is one area in which Secrets of Heaven differs radically from most earlier allegorical interpretations of Scripture (see note 346). The latter assume that the opening of Genesis does indeed attempt to explain the creation of the world and humankind (see, for example, Philo 1993, 3–5; Matt 2004, 107 and following). Swedenborg, by contrast, asserts that this passage is not dealing with actual cosmogenesis, but with the spiritual life of an individual human being. [RS]

¹⁶ (in §4). Swedenborg uses the term ecclesia, or “church,” in a number of ways. Here, as often, it does not denote a group of Christians but instead refers to one of five major phases Swedenborg assigns to the world’s religious history. In general Swedenborg calls the first phase the earliest church, the second the ancient church, the third the Jewish church (up to the time of Christ), the fourth the Christian church, and the fifth a new church. In the early volumes of the present work, though, he often adds another, called the Hebrew church, between the ancient and Jewish churches. [LHC]

¹⁷ (in §4). “Represent” (Latin repraesentare) and “symbolize” (significare) are heavily used terms in Swedenborg’s theology. The two have related but distinguishable meanings. Both indicate the presence of an inner meaning in an object, person, name, or action, but symbolism directs our attention to the meaning itself (especially as communicated by words), whereas representation generally directs our attention to the living enactment of that meaning (especially by persons). One result, as described in §§665 and 1361, is that a person who represents something good does not actually have to be good; an evil monarch, to use Swedenborg’s own example, can represent the Lord’s power. In §920, in the first volume of the first edition, Swedenborg makes clear that these distinctions parallel certain of the divisions in the world’s religious history he calls churches (see note 16). Members of the earliest church, he says, had the ability to perceive the inner meaning without effort; their perceptiveness was replaced in the ancient church by the codified knowledge of symbolism. In §1361:3, also in the first volume, he adds that when the church with an intuitive gift for symbolism came to an end, representation took the place of symbolism. However, by the third volume (that is, starting at §2760), Swedenborg becomes fairly consistent in assigning representative meaning to the individuals who appear in a story and symbolic meaning to everything else. A typical example occurs in §3131, which expounds a phrase in Genesis 24:29, “And Laban ran to the man outside at the spring.” Swedenborg describes this as symbolizing the predisposition that goodness has toward truth; running symbolizes predisposition, and a man symbolizes truth, as does a spring, but Laban represents a desire for what is good. These distinctions apply only where Swedenborg is using the word symbolize in a technical sense. Often he uses it much more broadly. For more on these distinctions in inner meaning in relation to various modes of biblical discursion, see §66. For a very brief overview of the history of biblical interpretation as it relates to Swedenborg’s views, see Smoley 2005, 27, and the references given there. [LHC, GHO]

¹⁸ (in §5). Swedenborg here, writing in late 1748 or early 1749, mentions that his consciousness of the spiritual world began “several years” ago and has continued in an unbroken fashion. (He uses the same phrase, “several years,” in similar contexts elsewhere in the present volume, in §§59:2, 67, 70, 150, 227, and 322:1, although in the last two of these instances he adds the nuance that his dual consciousness throughout that time has been “almost” continual.) Nevertheless, fixing a particular date to the shift is difficult, because Swedenborg gives somewhat conflicting evidence. In discussing it, he never gives a range of dates; he invariably assigns it either a single date or a fixed number of months or years before the time of writing. Yet the stated or implied date generally recedes the older he gets; that is, in the late 1740s, he places it in 1745; in the 1750s through 1766, he places it in 1744; and after 1766 he places it in 1743. See Tafel’s recapitulation (Tafel 1877, 1118–1127). This receding date may have been the effect of simple forgetfulness, or it may have been the result of an evolving understanding of the significance of various turning points and changes in consciousness he experienced between 1743 and 1745. [JSR]

¹⁹ (in the text of Genesis 1:1). Swedenborg’s translations of the Hebrew and Greek Scriptures into Latin were deliberately literal, and an attempt has been made in this translation to reflect this literal quality. For his translations in the current work, Swedenborg relied heavily on the Latin version of Scripture produced by Sebastian Schmidt (1617–1696), both in the independent Latin version (1696), and in the bilingual (Hebrew and Latin) van der Hooght–Schmidt version of 1740 (on Swedenborg’s use of the latter, see Cole 1977, 33). Though he admired the Schmidt version for its faithfulness, he did also make alterations based on his reading of the Hebrew and Greek. Readers who compare his versions with standard English translations may therefore notice variations from those texts. As a general rule they have not been noted in this edition. For further discussion of the translation of biblical passages in this edition, see the translator’s preface, pages 8–11. [LHC, SS]

²⁰ (in the text of Genesis 1:2). The Hebrew word for “face” (~yIn'P [pānïm]) is plural, and Swedenborg very often renders it literally, with a Latin plural, as here (faciebus). He speaks explicitly of the importance of grammatical number with respect to several other words (see, for example, §§30:2, 50:3, 253, 304, 374:3), but not this one. It has been rendered in the singular to accord with English usage. [LHC]

²¹ (in the text of Genesis 1:26). On the meaning of the shift here from the singular, “a human,” to the plural, “these,” see §478. [JSR]

²² (in §8). The “remnant” (also rendered “survivors”) to which Swedenborg refers consisted of Israelites and Judeans who survived the conquest of Israel by Assyria in 721 B.C.E. and of Judah by Babylon in 581 B.C.E. He draws a symbolic connection between this biblical remnant and the traces of goodness and truth every individual acquires as a child, which disappear from consciousness during adulthood but remain stored away for use during the process of rebirth. Key passages on the remnant include §§468, 530, 560–563, 576, 1050, 1906, 2284, 5135:2–4, 5342, 5897. Section 468 quotes a number of biblical occurrences: Isaiah 4:3; 10:20–22; Jeremiah 50:20; Amos 5:3; Micah 5:7. [LHC]

²³ (in §8). The Latin phrase here translated “bodily and worldly concerns—things that are our own” is ea quae sunt corporis & mundi, ita quae sunt propria, literally, “those things that are of the body and the world, thus which belong to the self.” In Swedenborg’s theology, the phrase the “things of the body,” and other forms of reference to the body, evoke an entire meaning-complex that is difficult for modern readers to recover. Aspects of this meaning-complex include the physical, material body; a certain class of psychological affects; and the physiological responses accompanying the latter. For instance, Swedenborg associates with the body not only a love for oneself, but a passion for dignities and honors, as well as the love of dominating over others. The primary reason for this association is that these drives are seen as having a secondary physical effect on the body according to a physiology stemming from ancient and Renaissance medical science. The modern reader should be aware, then, that “bodily concerns” may include such drives as ambition and pride, and are often, though not exclusively, connected with self-love. Love of oneself is generally cast in a negative light by Swedenborg, though it is approved as a practical necessity to enable one to better love and care for others (see Secrets of Heaven 6933–6938; True Christianity 405:1, and True Christianity 403–405 generally). By way of indicating the difficulties of this topic, it can be observed that though a love of wealth is traditionally considered selfish, in Swedenborg’s system it is considered not “bodily” but “worldly.” See also the translator’s preface, pages 6–7, and the reader’s guide, pages 57–58. [SS]

²⁴ (in §13). Swedenborg describes the seventh stage in the next chapter, which tells what happened on the seventh day of creation. See §§74, 84–88. [LHC]

²⁵ (in §14). See John 20:2, 13, 15, 18, 20, 25, 28; 21:7, 12, 15, 16, 17, 20; Mark 16:19, 20, which Swedenborg identifies in §2921:6 as passages in which Jesus’ disciples call him “Lord” after his resurrection. See also Luke 24:3, 34; John 21:21; Acts 1:6; 2:36; 7:59–60; 8:16; 1 Corinthians 4:5; 9:1, 5; Hebrews 7:14. [LHC, JLO]

²⁶ (in §16). For references to “the days of old,” see Deuteronomy 32:7; Psalms 44:1; 77:5; 143:5; Isaiah 23:7; 37:26; 51:9; 63:9, 11; Jeremiah 46:26; Lamentations 1:7; 2:17; 5:21; Amos 9:11; Micah 5:2; 7:14, 20; Malachi 3:4. [LHC]

²⁷ (in §16). The Hebrew original of Genesis uses three distinct words for creation: a'r'B (bārā), “create”; r'c"y (yāār), “form”; and h'f'[ (‘ā´sā), “make.” [RS]

²⁸ (in §16). Following a Christian practice of his times, Swedenborg used “Jehovah” as a rendering of the tetragrammaton, hwhy, “YHVH” (or “YHWH”), the four-letter name of God in the Hebrew Scriptures. In earliest times, Hebrew was written only with consonants; a system for indicating vowels was not perfected until the eighth century of the Common Era, and even in most modern Hebrew texts, vowels are not marked. The current scholarly reconstruction of the original pronunciation of the name is “Yahweh”: see Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament, under “YHWH.” A strict understanding of the Second Commandment, “You are not to take the name of YHVH your God in vain” (Exodus 20:7), led pious Jews to avoid pronouncing the name aloud; instead the name y"nod]a (’ăōnāi, literally meaning “my lord”) was read. To indicate this, vowels similar to those in Adonai were added to YHVH, creating the form Jehovah. At occurrences of the combination hwhy y"nod]a (’ăōnāi yhvh), “the Lord YHVH,” the vowels for ~yih{l/a (’ĕlōhïm), or “God,” are added to the four consonants instead, again in adapted form, to make hIOwh?y (yĕhôvih). Swedenborg carefully represents this as “Jehovih.” For a traditional Jewish view of this vocalization, see Gikatilla 1994, 148–149. “Yahweh” itself, h<w.h:y (yahweh), may be grammatically an imperfect causative form of the verb h"y'h (hāyā), “to be,” meaning “he who causes to be” or “he creates” (Cross 1973, 65). This identification is controversial, however. Swedenborg himself connects the name “Jehovah” with being: see True Christianity 19:1, where he says the name means “I am” (see Exodus 3:14, 15; 6:3). Some modern English Bibles use the name “Jehovah,” while others render the term as “Lord,” so capitalized; “Lord,” in capital and lowercase; “Yahweh”; “Adonai”; or even “God.” [GFD, RS]

²⁹ (in §16). As was the custom in his day, Swedenborg refers to Psalms as a book of David. [LHC]

³⁰ (in §16). “Jah” is a shortening of the name Jehovah. Jewish esoteric thought ascribed the different names of God to different aspects of the divine. “Jah” or “Yah” (Hebrew H"y [yāh]) was associated with divine wisdom and mercy (Gikatilla 1994, 4–5, 325). [RS, LHC]

³¹ (in §16). The Latin word here translated “they will continue to be created” is creabuntur, a simple future form. Its subject is the world of living things, which are dependent on God for their existence. The original Hebrew has an imperfect verb form here, indicating an action that is continuous or not yet completed. Many English versions of the Bible render this word “they are created.” [RS]

³² (in §17). Swedenborg seems to have in mind Christ’s parable of the sower and the seed, in which individuals are likened to ground on which the “seed” of the word is sown (Mark 4:3–20). See §29:2. [RS]

³³ (in §18). Here, in a transference of perspective common in his works, Swedenborg describes a spiritual viewpoint in terms of the geography of the spiritual world. “To see from heaven” is in his theology to see people, intellectual movements, or philosophical abstractions in the “higher” light that prevails in heaven, even if those entities themselves are “lower down” in the spiritual, or even in the physical, world. (Aspects of the mind that are more spiritual can be described as both “higher” and “more inward,” and less spiritual aspects as “lower” and “more outward.” See also Swedenborg [1771] 2006, 739 note 455.) The nature of heaven’s light, as Swedenborg explains it, is that it reveals the true underlying nature of the thing or person seen, but shows it as a pictorial or animated graphic (Secrets of Heaven 4674:2–3; Heaven and Hell 131; his 1768 work Marriage Love 269:3; True Christianity 281:12, 462:11). This light does not always flow down into spiritual areas below heaven, but when it does, it radically changes the appearance of things there (Heaven and Hell 553; True Christianity 187:2). Swedenborg reports seeing people’s inner natures represented in the light of heaven as people (Secrets of Heaven 6626; Revelation Unveiled 341:2); animals (see Swedenborg’s posthumously published theological work Revelation Explained [= Swedenborg 1994–1997] §1005:3); birds (True Christianity 42, 334:8); monstrous, mythological, or biblical creatures (see the 1763 work Divine Love and Wisdom 254; Marriage Love 521:1; True Christianity 388:1, 389:7); or lifeless objects (see the 1763 work Divine Providence 226; True Christianity 31:4, 110:8, 113:4). For similar visions of the inner soul of certain individuals as dark or inanimate masses, see Swedenborg’s posthumously published Spiritual Experiences (= Swedenborg 1998–2002) §§1271, 3215, 4060. For related phenomena, see notes 64, 139. [JSR, SS]

³⁴ (in §18). The spiritual “devastation” to which Swedenborg alludes here is common in religious literature. A classic account of it is given by the psychologist and philosopher William James (1842–1910), who speaks of the progress from a “sick soul” to a “divided self” and finally to regeneration, or spiritual rebirth—which is often the result of a conversion experience (see James 1910, 136–188). One term frequently applied to this “devastation” is the “dark night of the soul,” from the poem of the same name by the sixteenth-century Spanish mystic John of the Cross (1542–1591; see John of the Cross 1990). Swedenborg endured a similar crisis in the years 1743–1745, which marked his transformation from scientific investigator to spiritual visionary. Swedenborg’s Journal of Dreams, a record he kept during the months March–October 1744, gives a vivid account of his internal upheavals during this period; see Swedenborg 2001b. [RS]

³⁵ (in §18). For prophetic depictions of spiritual devastation, see the following passages, which are quoted among others on this topic in §5376: Isaiah 6:9–13; 13:6; 16:4; 33:8, 9; 42:14, 15; 49:17–19; 51:17–23; Ezekiel 36:3–12; Zephaniah 1:14–18. [LHC]

³⁶ (in §18). Compare Ephesians 4:22–24; Colossians 3:9–10. [LHC, JLO]

³⁷ (in §19). For Bible passages mentioning “the remnant,” which is sometimes also rendered “survivors,” see note 22. [LHC]

³⁸ (in §20). On Swedenborg’s concepts of self-love and the love of worldly advantages, see note 23. [SS]

³⁹ (in §21). For comparisons between day and night in the Bible (implicit and explicit), see the passages quoted in §22, as well as the following passages, which are quoted in §2353: Micah 3:5, 6; Luke 17:34; John 9:4; 11:9, 10. [LHC]

⁴⁰ (in §22). “Up till [the day’s second] evening” means “when the night becomes morning.” In addition to the usual meaning as the time when day turns into night, Swedenborg considered the word “evening” in Old Testament idiom to apply as well to the twilight before dawn. Compare Secrets of Heaven 883, “Evening meant the half-light before morning,” and a similar statement in §2323:1. Compare also Secrets of Heaven 7844, 10135:5, where Swedenborg discusses the Mosaic phrase “between the evenings” (Exodus 12:6; 16:12; 29:39, 41; 30:8; Leviticus 23:5; Numbers 9:3, 5, 11; 28:4, 8) and defines it as meaning “overnight,” that is, during the period between twilight at the end of one day and twilight at the beginning of the next. [LHC]

⁴¹ (in §23). The phrase “its days” here refers literally to the final days of Babylon. [LHC]

⁴² (in §23). Swedenborg here introduces two quotes by saying that they came from “the same prophet,” namely, Jeremiah, yet one of them is from Jeremiah and the other from Lamentations. This is because Swedenborg, like others in his day, saw Lamentations as a book by Jeremiah. [LHC]

⁴³ (in §25). The Latin word represented here by “spreading out” (expandere) and the one represented by “expanse” in the preceding verse (expansum) are forms of the same word. In other words, the “expanse” is what is “spread out.” [LHC]

⁴⁴ (in §25). This bracketed interpolation is Swedenborg’s. [LHC]

⁴⁵ (in §25). Though Isaiah 42:4 is cited, it is not in fact represented in the quotation. Swedenborg frequently gives the numbers of such extra verses in the context of the material he actually quotes; they constitute a kind of “see also” reference. In general, such citation anomalies are not noted further in the annotations to this work. See the discussion of Swedenborg’s quotation practices in the translator’s preface, pages 8–11. [JSR, SS]

⁴⁶ (in §25). In §9596:4, 6 Swedenborg quotes the following verses, which speak of stretching out the heavens: Psalms 104:2; Isaiah 40:22; 45:12; 51:15; 54:2; Zechariah 12:1. [LHC]

⁴⁷ (in §28). The “House” means the Temple in Jerusalem, here and in later quotations in §§109, 308:2, 576:3, 680:5; and in Swedenborg’s general reference in §710. [JSR]

⁴⁸ (in §28). The “eastern” sea here, from the perspective of Jerusalem, refers to the Dead Sea, and the “western” sea refers to the Mediterranean. [JSR]

⁴⁹ (in §30:2). Here Swedenborg begins to set out one of the central themes of his work: the dynamic between goodness and truth. Goodness is associated with love and the will; truth is associated with faith and the intellect. Swedenborg’s entire system is based on the relationship between these two forces, which, as he notes here, entails the superiority of goodness (here, as love) over truth (here, as faith). He furthermore associates these two forces, goodness and truth, with the “heavenly” and the “spiritual” respectively, the former being more inward and closer to the Lord than the latter. In Heaven and Hell 20–27, Swedenborg describes heaven itself as being divided into separate kingdoms based upon the angels’ capacity to resonate with the Lord. Those who resonate with him on the basis of goodness, through love, are in a higher heaven, and are called “heavenly,” while those who resonate with him on the basis of truth—that is, through the intellect—are called “spiritual.” It would be hard to overstate the importance of this dynamic in Swedenborg’s thought. Much of Secrets of Heaven, as well as of his other writings, is devoted to expanding on it. For further discussion, a diagram of this dynamic, and illustrative passages, see the reader’s guide, pages 45–46. [RS]

⁵⁰ (in §30:2). In both the original Hebrew and Swedenborg’s Latin version, Genesis 1:14 combines a plural subject with a singular verb. (The Hebrew is toroa.m yih>y [y÷hï m÷’ōrō]; the Latin is sit luminaria.) The disagreement in number cannot easily be represented in English. [LHC]

⁵¹ (in §30:3). Swedenborg characterizes the mind as being possessed of two basic faculties: the will (Latin voluntas, elsewhere in this edition rendered “volition” or “intention”) and the intellect (Latin intellectus, also translated “understanding” and “discernment”); see §35. In Swedenborg’s use, intellect has a somewhat broader connotation than it has today, one more consonant with its use in the system of the medieval Christian philosophers who were known as the Scholastics. For example, in the philosophy of the major figure of Scholastic thought, Thomas Aquinas (1224 or 1225–1274), which underlies the terminology of much of philosophical language up to and including Swedenborg’s time, intellect encompasses all of what we associate with the faculties of mind, not only the capacity to reason and understand, but the capacity to perceive ideas in the abstract, as well as the ability to be aware of itself (Shallo 1923, 115–116). The complementarity of will and intellect is also something Swedenborg shares with Scholastic thought. Aquinas, for example, observes, “We can easily understand why these powers include one another in their acts, because the intellect understands that the will wills, and the will wills the intellect to understand. In the same way, the good is contained under the true, inasmuch as it is an understood truth, and the true under the good, inasmuch as it is a desired good” (Summa Theologiae 82:4; translation in Pegis 1948, 366–367). Note again the complementarity of the “true” and the “good.” [RS]

⁵² (in §31:1). The Latin word here (terra) and the Hebrew word for which it stands (#,r,a [’ere]) mean both “land” and “earth.” Swedenborg emphasizes it as he does many other instances of words for earth and sky in §§25, 28, 29, 30. [LHC]

⁵³ (in §31:1). “Orions” seems to mean simply constellations. Swedenborg used the Latin word oriones here, which is the hypothetical plural of Orion, the mythological hunter for whom one of the constellations is named. The Hebrew word, as the third Latin edition points out, is the plural of lyis.K (k÷sïl), which is the name for the same constellation. [LHC]

⁵⁴ (in §31:3). On the meaning of “church” here, see note 16. [LHC]

⁵⁵ (in §32:1). “The close of the age” (consummatio saeculi, in the Latin) is a scriptural term referring to a time of final judgment on the world. The concept pervades Daniel, Revelation, and parts of Matthew; see Matthew 13:39, 40 for a specific example of the term. In Swedenborg’s system the Last Judgment does not refer to the end of the earth as we know it; rather to a purgation of the spiritual world that makes it possible for a “new church” to be established on earth. It also marks the commencement of an era when spiritual truths that were formerly hidden are to become accessible to human minds. Swedenborg regarded his own works as a crucial component of this new revelation. In his 1758 book Last Judgment, he states that this event took place in the spiritual world in 1757, the year after the last volume of Secrets of Heaven was published. For more on the Last Judgment, see note 529. [LHC, RS]

⁵⁶ (in §32:2). These are angels of the heavenly kingdom rather than the spiritual kingdom; see note 49. [LHC]

⁵⁷ (in §34:1). On this treatment of “lights” as a singular, see §30:2 and note 50. [LHC]

⁵⁸ (in §36). “The Law and the Prophets” refer to two main sections of the Hebrew Scriptures: the Law or Torah, comprising the five books of Moses: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy; and the Prophets, including Isaiah, Jeremiah, Lamentations, Ezekiel, and the twelve minor prophets. Since Swedenborg here explains the phrase as referring to “the whole Word,” he is apparently extending it as well to parts of a third section of the Hebrew Scriptures known as the “Writings,” which includes poetic and philosophical works such as the Psalms, Proverbs, and Ecclesiastes; but see also notes 2 and 86. (Swedenborg included Daniel among the Prophets, but in the Hebrew Scriptures it is included in the Writings.) [RS]

⁵⁹ (in §38). The following clauses depend grammatically on verse 17, quoted above at §30. For a discussion of the treatment of quotations in this text, see the translator’s preface, pages 8–11, and also page 132 above. [LHC]

⁶⁰ (in §39:1). The Latin phrase here translated “the Son of Humankind” is Filius Hominis, traditionally rendered “the Son of Man.” Elsewhere in this edition it has sometimes been rendered “the Human-born One.” The force of the phrase is literally “someone descended from the human race,” “someone who was born human,” and therefore “someone human” (see §49:3). It is difficult to estimate the original range of meaning of the term, however. In the Old Testament, the phrase almost always applies to a human being (as opposed to the Divine), and seems to encourage humility by emphasizing the person’s mere humanness. In the New Testament it in most cases arguably denotes Jesus Christ, as Swedenborg clearly takes it to mean in the passage at hand; but scholars differ widely on whether it carries (1) the same humble force there as it does in the Old Testament, (2) a virtually opposite exalted and apocalyptic meaning, (3) some combination of the two, or (4) something else altogether. See Borsch 1967. [JSR]