Servant of the Lord Jesus Christ

Genesis: Chapter 6.


After charting the spiritual decline through Adam’s lineage, Genesis Chapter 6, in Swedenborg’s Arcana Coelestia, describes the absolute worst state humanity fell into just before the “Flood.” It’s the story of spiritual self-destruction and the desperate, merciful attempt to save a tiny spiritual remnant (Noah) to start a new church.

The Ultimate Degradation: Spiritual Adultery (Verses 1–7).

The chapter begins with the reason for the impending “flood”—a complete and utter corruption of the human will.

Sons of God and Daughters of Men:

The “sons of God” who married the “daughters of men” is not literal intermarriage between angels and humans. Sons of God: Represent the Divine Truths and Doctrines that were still known (the knowledge passed down from the Most Ancient Church). * Daughters of Men: Represent the Lusts of the Corrupted Self-Will (the selfish and evil affections of the natural man). * The Marriage: This union means these evil people took the holy truths they knew and married them to their foulest lusts. They deliberately used heavenly truths to confirm their evils, believing that because they had the doctrine, they could live any way they wanted. This is the worst kind of spiritual evil, which Swedenborg calls Profanation or Spiritual Adultery.

  • The Nephilim: The “giants” or Nephilim born from this union represent the terrible false persuasions and destructive evils that sprang from profanation. These weren’t just big people; they were monstrous spirits whose evil was so powerful it sought to destroy all goodness and truth.
  • “God Repented”: This line (“The Lord regretted that He had made man”) is not literal regret or sadness on God’s part. In the internal sense, it signifies the Lord’s infinite Mercy combined with the human race’s profound distance from Him. It expresses the terrible state of humanity from their perspective, even as the Lord acts to protect the innocent.
  • “My spirit shall not strive with man forever”: This means the Lord was forced to withdraw His immediate celestial influx (the pure love and perception) because if He didn’t, the evil people would utterly destroy themselves eternally through profanation. This withdrawal is the mercy that makes the Flood necessary.

Noah and the Ark: The Preservation of a Remnant (Verses 8–18).

This is the central plot shift: the Lord saves a small, specific remnant of life.

  • Noah: Represents the commencement of the new Ancient Church—a seed or tiny island of integrity in the spiritual world. Crucially, Noah is described as having three qualities:
    1. Just: He had Charity (Goodness of Will).
    2. Perfect: He had Faith (Truth of Understanding).
    3. Walked with God: He had Divine Instruction (Doctrine). Noah’s state is the best that could be found in that time, but it was spiritual goodness (based on obedience and doctrine), not the celestial goodness of Adam (based on pure love and perception).
  • The Ark: The ark symbolizes the new church itself and the man who is being regenerated. It is the safe, containing vessel where spiritual and natural life can be preserved during the destruction of the old state.
  • Building the Ark (Regeneration in Process): The instructions to build the Ark are symbolic of the process of establishing the new church’s doctrine:
    • Gopher wood: Represents natural good (the foundational, simple goodness needed to start).
    • Rooms (Nests): The internal compartments symbolize the various doctrines and truths organized within the new church/mind.
    • Pitch (Kopher): The coating inside and out represents the protection of genuine good from falsities (outside) and from evils (inside). It seals the new life from the corrupting influence of the profane world.
  • The Sons (Shem, Ham, Japheth): Noah’s sons represent the three essential doctrines or aspects of the new Ancient Church that need to be preserved:
    • Shem: Internal Worship (Worship from Love).
    • Ham: External Worship that is profaned (Worship without Love).
    • Japheth: External Worship that is reformed (Worship from Obedience).

The Command to Gather (Verses 19–22).

The command to bring the animals and birds into the Ark is not just a biological headcount; it’s a symbolic mandate.

  • Clean and Unclean Animals: Animals represent the Affections (feelings and desires) within the human mind. The clean and unclean animals symbolize the mix of good affections (clean) and natural, neutral affections (unclean) that still exist in the individual’s natural mind and must be preserved for future use.
  • Birds and Creeping Things: Birds represent Intellectual and Rational Thoughts, while creeping things represent the lowest, sensory parts of the mind. All these faculties—good thoughts, good affections, and the sensory base—must be preserved in the Ark (the new church/regenerate mind) to restart spiritual life.
  • “Noah Did According to All That God Commanded Him”: This signifies that the new church was established exactly according to Divine Order, based on obedience and doctrine, marking the start of a completely new spiritual phase for humanity.

Summary.

Genesis 6 is the beginning of the Judgment on the Most Ancient Church. The “Flood” is not an act of physical destruction, but the suffocation of humanity’s spiritual life caused by their own extreme evil, where the love of self had utterly destroyed the perception of the Divine. The Ark is the Lord’s merciful provision—a small spiritual vessel (the nascent Ancient Church) created to save the fundamental seeds of goodness and truth from total corruption and extinction.

Taken from Arcana Coelestia Volume 1.

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