Genesis: Chapter 9.

You’ve reached the final part of Volume 1, Chapter 9. After the Flood (the devastation and cleansing of the old evil will), Genesis 9 is all about the Lord establishing the Ancient Church—a new kind of spiritual life based on external obedience and doctrine, not the spontaneous love of Eden. It details the new rules (spiritual laws) and the famous sign (the rainbow).

The New Laws for the New Church (Verses 1–7).

The chapter starts with the Lord giving Noah a blessing and a new set of rules. This signifies the Lord establishing the spiritual laws for the new Ancient Church (represented by Noah). This Church is fundamentally different from the celestial church of Adam.

• “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth”: Spiritually, this is the command for goodness and truth to grow and spread within the mind of the regenerate person. New spiritual life must take hold in the external self (“the earth”).

• Dominion Over Animals: The new human is now given “fear and dread” over the animals. This means that the rational, spiritual mind must now forcefully dominate the lower, animalistic passions and natural desires. Unlike the Most Ancient Church, whose lower self was innocent, the new mind knows it has hereditary evil and must actively rule its affections through effort and fear of penalty.

• Eating Flesh: The permission to eat meat (“every moving thing that liveth shall be meat for you”) is a significant spiritual shift. It means the Ancient Church was permitted to appropriate and use the natural affections and simple goods (the “animals”) for spiritual life, which the purely celestial church did not need.

• The Prohibitions (The Noahide Laws):

  • “Only flesh with the life thereof, the blood thereof, shall ye not eat”: This is the core spiritual law of the Ancient Church. Blood represents the holy, celestial truth (Divine Life). This law means they must not profane the holy things of love and charity by mixing them with their newly natural/corrupted affections. They must not use heavenly life for evil purposes.
  • “Your blood of your lives will I require… at the hand of every living thing”: This law against murder signifies the sacredness of Charity (spiritual life). If someone destroys the spiritual life (charity/innocence) in themselves or others, they are spiritually condemned. This establishes the importance of the external moral law.

The Covenant and the Sign (Verses 8–17).

The Lord establishes a new, formal covenant with the earth, and gives a visible sign.

• The Covenant: This covenant is a new relationship between the Lord and the human race (Noah and his descendants). It is a promise that spiritual life will never again be entirely destroyed by profanation (the kind of evil that caused the Flood). The Lord will ensure that humanity always has a path to salvation.
• The Rainbow (The Bow in the Cloud): This is the visible sign of the covenant. The rainbow in the clouds spiritually represents the mixture of celestial and spiritual light (the Lord’s Goodness and Truth) as it shines through the darkness of human ignorance and natural-mindedness (the cloud/rain).
  • The Colors: The various colors represent the different, lower-level truths and doctrines that humanity needs after the Fall.
  • The Sign: The rainbow being “in the cloud” means that the Lord’s mercy (the bow) is always present in a modified, gentle way, illuminating the darkness of human nature without overwhelming or destroying it. It’s a guarantee that even though the original celestial perception is lost (the darkness/cloud), the Lord’s goodness still reaches them through doctrine (the colors).

The Shame of Noah and the Curse of Canaan (Verses 18–29).

This final, strange section illustrates the immediate imperfections and spiritual divisions within the new Ancient Church.

• Noah’s Drunkenness: Noah (representing the new church) becoming drunk from wine (which symbolizes spiritual truth) signifies that the new church’s doctrinal truth was mixed with natural, earthly desires, leading to error and temporary spiritual confusion. It shows the instability of this new spiritual state.
• Ham, Shem, and Japheth: Noah’s sons now represent the various subsequent groups within the Ancient Church, which are characterized by their approach to this error:
  • Ham (Seeing the Nakedness): Represents those who look at the new church’s errors (Noah’s nakedness) and mock them—specifically, those who use the knowledge of spiritual truths to despise charity. This is the profanation of the external church.
  • Shem and Japheth (Covering the Nakedness): Represent those who treat the errors of the church with reverence and charity (covering Noah with a garment). They care about good more than judging error.
• The Curse on Canaan: The curse falls on Ham’s son, Canaan. Canaan symbolizes those who use external worship and tradition without any internal good or truth—pure, cold formalism and ritual. The curse means this kind of cold, empty worship is utterly rejected. This sets the stage for the next phase of the Bible—the eventual Israelite conquest of the literal land of Canaan, symbolizing the spiritual fight against this empty formalism.

Summary.

Genesis 9 is the spiritual charter for the Ancient Church, whose life is no longer spontaneous love but a structure of moral and spiritual laws (the prohibitions) given to control the corrupt natural self. The rainbow is the merciful promise that the Lord will govern human understanding in such a way that spiritual life, though now harder and based on external discipline, can never again be utterly destroyed by the self-inflicted spiritual disaster of the Flood. The events with Noah’s sons show that even the new church is immediately subject to temptation and internal division.

Taken from Arcana Coelestia Volume 1.

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