Spiritual Meaning of GENESIS 6:16
O thou afflicted, tossed with tempest and not comforted, I will make thy suns (windows) of rubies, and thy gates of carbuncles, and all thy border of pleasant stones (Isaiah 54:11, 12)
. Here "suns" are put for "windows," from the light that is admitted, or transmitted. The "suns" or "windows" in this passage are intellectual things that come from charity, and therefore they are likened to a "ruby;" the "gates" are rational things thence derived; and the "border" is that which is of knowledge and the senses (scientificum et sensuale). The Lord‘s church is here treated of.
[2] All the windows of the temple at Jerusalem represented the same: the highest of them the intellectual things; the middle, rational things; and the lowest, the things of knowledge and the senses; for there were three stories (1 Kings 4, 6, 8). Likewise the windows of the new Jerusalem in (Ezekiel 40:16, 22, 25, 33, 36). In Jeremiah:--
Death is come up into our windows, it is entered into our palaces; to cut off the little child from the street, the young men from the streets (vicis) (Jeremiah 9:21).
Windows of the middle story are here meant, which are rational things, it being meant that they are extinguished; the "little child in the street," is truth beginning.
[3] Because "windows" signify things intellectual and rational that are of truth, they signify also reasonings that are of falsity. Thus in the same Prophet:--
Woe unto him that buildeth his house in what is not righteousness, and his chambers in what is not judgment; who saith, I will build me a house of measures, and spacious chambers, and he cutteth him out windows, and it is floored with cedar, and painted with vermilion (Jeremiah 22:13, 14).
Here "windows" denote principles of falsity. In Zephaniah:--
Droves of beasts shall lie down in the midst of her, every wild animal of his kind (gentis), both the cormorant and the bittern (chippod) shall lodge in the pomegranates thereof; a voice shall sing in the window; wasting shall be upon the threshold (Zephaniah 2:14).
This is said of Asshur and Nineveh; "Asshur" denotes the understanding, here vastated; a "voice singing in the windows," reasonings from phantasies.
. That by the "door at the side" is signified hearing is now therefore evident, and there is no need that it should be confirmed by similar examples from the Word. For the ear is to the internal organs of sense as a door at the side is to a window above; or what is the same, the hearing which is of the ear, is so to the intellectual part which is of the internal sensory. . That by the "lowest, second, and third stories," are signified things of knowledge, of reason, and of understanding (scientifica, rationalia, et intellectualia), follows also from what has been shown. There are three degrees of things intellectual in man; the lowest is that of knowledge (scientificum); the middle is the rational; the highest, the intellectual. These are so distinct from each other that they should never be confounded. But man is not aware of this, for the reason that he makes life consist in what is of sense and knowledge only; and while be cleaves to this, he cannot even know that his rational part is distinct from that which is concerned with knowing (scientificum); and still less that his intellectual part is so. And yet the truth is that the Lord flows through man’s intellectual into his rational, and through his rational into the knowledge of the memory, whence comes the life of the senses of sight and of hearing. This is the true influx, and this is the true intercourse of the soul with the body. Without influx of the Lord‘s life into the things of the understanding in man--or rather into things of the will and through these into those of understanding--and through things of understanding into things rational, and through things rational into his knowledges which are of the memory, life would be impossible to man. And even though a man is in falsities and evils, yet there is an influx of the Lord’s life through the things of the will and of the understanding; but the things that flow in are received in the rational part according to its form; and this influx gives man the ability to reason, to reflect, and to understand what truth and good are. But concerning these things, of the Lord‘s Divine mercy hereafter; and also how the case is with the life that pertains to brutes. . These three degrees, which in general are called those of man’s intellectual things, namely, understanding, reason, and memory-knowledge, are likewise signified, as before said, by the windows of the three stories of the temple at Jerusalem (1 Kings 6:4, 6, 8), and also as above by the rivers which went forth out of the Garden of Eden in the east. The "east" there signifies the Lord; "Eden" love, which is of the will; the " garden" intelligence thence derived; the "rivers" wisdom, reason, and memory-knowledge, concerning which see what was said before (Genesis 2:10-14). GENESIS 6:16 previous - next - text - summary - Genesis - Full Page
Author: E. Swedenborg (1688-1772). | Design: I.J. Thompson, Feb 2002. | www.BibleMeanings.info |