42. Verse 21. And God created great whales, and every living soul that creepeth, which the waters made to creep forth, after their kinds, and every winged fowl after its kind; and God saw that it was good. "Fishes" as before said, signify memory-knowledges, now animated by faith from the Lord, and thus alive. "Whales" signify their general principles, in subordination to which, and from which, are the particulars; for there is nothing in the universe that is not under some general principle, as a means that it may exist and subsist. "Whales" or "great fishes" are sometimes mentioned by the Prophets, and they there signify the generals of memory-knowledges. Pharaoh the king of Egypt (by whom is represented human wisdom or intelligence, that is, knowledge [scientia] in general), is called a "great whale." As in Ezekiel:
Behold, I am against thee, Pharaoh king of Egypt, the great whale that lieth in the midst of his rivers, that hath said, My river is mine own, and I have made myself (Ezek. 29:3). [2] And in another place:
Take up a lamentation for Pharaoh king of Egypt, and say unto him, Thou art as a whale in the seas, and hast gone forth in thy rivers, and hast troubled the waters with thy feet (Ezek. 32:2), by which words are signified those who desire to enter into the mysteries of faith by means of memory-knowledges, and thus from themselves. In Isaiah:
In that day Jehovah, with His hard and great and strong sword, shall visit upon leviathan the longish [oblongum] serpent, even leviathan the crooked serpent, and He shall slay the whales that are in the sea (Isa. 27:1). By "slaying the whales that are in the sea" is signified that such persons are ignorant of even the general principles of truth. So in Jeremiah:
Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babylon hath devoured me, he hath troubled me, he hath made me an empty vessel, he hath swallowed me as a whale, he hath filled his belly with my delicacies, he hath cast me out (Jer. 51:34),denoting that he had swallowed the knowledges of faith, here called "delicacies" as the whale did Jonah; a "whale" denoting those who possess the general principles of the knowledges of faith as mere memory-knowledges, and act in this manner.
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