Hello Readers. We are gathering passages that reference children in the womb and/or their development. This collection (and subsequent ones on other topics) will then be made available in a new page of our blog: ‘What does He say about…’ If you would like to contribute to this list, please post a passage in the comment section below.
A few points to remember: (1)We know there are so many beautiful interconnecting Truths in the Word and Heavenly Doctrines, but for the purpose of this project, we are trying to gather passages that clearly and directly refer to this subject. (2)We are looking for passages–not analysis or application. (3)Please remember to reference!
Arcana Coelestia 5052: “The angels who are in the inmost heaven are the wisest of all, and from their innocence they appear to others as infants, for they love infants much more than do their fathers and mothers. They are present with infants in the womb, and through them the Lord cares for the feeding and full development of the infants therein; thus they have charge over those who are with child.”
Exodus 21: 22-25: “If men fight, and hurt a woman with child, so that she gives birth prematurely, yet no harm follows, he shall surely be punished accordingly as the woman’s husband imposes on him; and he shall pay as the judges determine. But if any harm follows, then you shall give life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, stripe for stripe.”
Divine Love & Wisdom 11:2, 6 “The one receptacle is to be the Will of the future human being, the other to be his Understanding, yet there is nothing whatever of his Will and Understanding present during formation. Will and Understanding do not commence with man prior to the opening of the lungs, which only takes place after birth….There is life in the embryo before birth, but the embryo is not conscious of it . . . . The life from which the embryo in the womb lives is not its life, but the Lord’s alone, Who alone is life.”
Divine Love & Wisdom 401.3: “Love or the will is unable to effect anything by its human form without a marriage with wisdom or the understanding. This also is evident from the correspondence of the heart with the will. The embryo man lives by the heart, not by the lungs. For in the fetus the blood does not flow from the heart into the lungs, giving it the ability to respire; but it flows through the foramen ovale into the left ventricle of the heart; consequently the fetus is unable to move any part of its body, but lies enswathed, neither has it sensation, for its organs of sense are closed. So is it with love or the will, from which the fetus lives indeed, though obscurely, that is, without sensation or action. But as soon as the lungs are opened, which is the case after birth, he begins to feel and act, and likewise to will and think. From all this it can be seen, that love or the will is unable to effect anything by means of its human form without a marriage with wisdom or the understanding.”
Divine Love & Wisdom 432: ” The nature of our first stage after conception. No one can know what our first or primal stage in the womb after conception is like because we cannot see it. Further, it is composed of a spiritual substance that is not visible in physical light. Some people in this world are inclined to focus their minds on our primal stage, the father’s semen that is the agent of conception, and many of them have fallen into the error of thinking that we are complete humans from the very first and then reach completeness simply by getting larger. For this reason, some angels to whom the Lord had revealed it showed me what this first or primal stage of ours is like with respect to its form. Since they had made this a matter of their wisdom and since the delight of that wisdom was to share what they knew with others, they were given permission to present a representation of that initial form of ours to my own eyes in heaven’s light.
It was like this. I saw what seemed to be a tiny image of a brain with a sort of face drawn faintly on its front, with no appendages. On its upper convex part, this primal form was a composite of closely connected little balls or spheres. Each sphere was made up of still smaller spheres, and each of these of spheres still smaller. This meant that there were three levels. Something that looked like a face was outlined on the front, concave part.
The convex part was enveloped by a very thin, transparent meningeal membrane. The convex part, the miniature image of a brain, was also divided into what seemed to be two lobes the way the full-scale brain is divided into two hemispheres. I was told that the right lobe was the vessel of love and that the left lobe was the vessel of wisdom, and that by some incredibly intricate connections they were like partners or roommates.
In the light of heaven, a radiant light, the angels also showed me that inwardly this composite structure of a miniature brain was in the design and form of heaven with respect to both its setting and its flow, while the outer composite structure was opposed to that design and that form.
Once I had seen what they showed me, the angels said that the two inner levels, the ones that were in the design and form of heaven, were vessels of love and wisdom from the Lord, while the outer level, the one that was opposed to heaven’s design and form, was a vessel of hellish love and madness. This is because we are born into all kinds of evil because of our hereditary imperfection, and these evils are located in our outermost natures. These flaws cannot be eliminated unless our higher levels are opened, the levels that are vessels of love and wisdom from the Lord, as already noted. Further, since love and wisdom are the essential person, love and wisdom being the Lord in essence, and since this primal stage of ours is a vessel, it follows that there is in this primal stage a constant striving toward the human form, a form that it gradually takes on.”
Lord 32.7: ” In these places, and in all others in which He is mentioned, the Father means the Divinity present in the Lord from conception, which, according to the Christian world’s doctrine of faith, was like the soul in the body in the case of any other person. ”
Luke 1: ” Now Mary arose in those days and went into the hill country with haste, to a city of Judah, and entered the house of Zacharias and greeted Elizabeth. And it happened, when Elizabeth heard the greeting of Mary, that the babe leaped in her womb; and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit. Then she spoke out with a loud voice and said, “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb! But why is this granted to me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me? For indeed, as soon as the voice of your greeting sounded in my ears, the babe leaped in my womb for joy. Blessed is she who believed, for there will be a fulfillment of those things which were told her from the Lord.”