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Exodus 34

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1 And Jehovah said unto Moses, Hew thee two tables of stone like unto the first: and I will write upon the tables the words that were on the first tables, which thou brakest.

2 And be ready by the morning, and come up in the morning unto mount Sinai, and present thyself there to me on the top of the mount.

3 And no man shall come up with thee; neither let any man be seen throughout all the mount; neither let the flocks nor herds feed before that mount.

4 And he hewed two tables of stone like unto the first; and Moses rose up early in the morning, and went up unto mount Sinai, as Jehovah had commanded him, and took in his hand two tables of stone.

5 And Jehovah descended in the cloud, and stood with him there, and proclaimed the name of Jehovah.

6 And Jehovah passed by before him, and proclaimed, Jehovah, Jehovah, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abundant in lovingkindness and truth,

7 keeping lovingkindness for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin; and that will by no means clear [the guilty], visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, and upon the children's children, upon the third and upon the fourth generation.

8 And Moses made haste, and bowed his head toward the earth, and worshipped.

9 And he said, If now I have found favor in thy sight, O Lord, let the Lord, I pray thee, go in the midst of us; for it is a stiffnecked people; and pardon our iniquity and our sin, and take us for thine inheritance.

10 And he said, Behold, I make a covenant: before all thy people I will do marvels, such as have not been wrought in all the earth, nor in any nation; and all the people among which thou art shall see the work of Jehovah; for it is a terrible thing that I do with thee.

11 Observe thou that which I command thee this day: behold, I drive out before thee the Amorite, and the Canaanite, and the Hittite, and the Perizzite, and the Hivite, and the Jebusite.

12 Take heed to thyself, lest thou make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land whither thou goest, lest it be for a snare in the midst of thee:

13 but ye shall break down their altars, and dash in pieces their pillars, and ye shall cut down their Asherim;

14 for thou shalt worship no other god: for Jehovah, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God:

15 lest thou make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land, and they play the harlot after their gods, and sacrifice unto their gods, and one call thee and thou eat of his sacrifice;

16 and thou take of their daughters unto thy sons, and their daughters play the harlot after their gods, and make thy sons play the harlot after their gods.

17 Thou shalt make thee no molten gods.

18 The feast of unleavened bread shalt thou keep. Seven days thou shalt eat unleavened bread, as I commanded thee, at the time appointed in the month Abib; for in the month Abib thou camest out from Egypt.

19 All that openeth the womb is mine; and all thy cattle that is male, the firstlings of cow and sheep.

20 And the firstling of an ass thou shalt redeem with a lamb: and if thou wilt not redeem it, then thou shalt break its neck. All the first-born of thy sons thou shalt redeem. And none shall appear before me empty.

21 Six days thou shalt work, but on the seventh day thou shalt rest: in plowing time and in harvest thou shalt rest.

22 And thou shalt observe the feast of weeks, [even] of the first-fruits of wheat harvest, and the feast of ingathering at the year's end.

23 Three times in the year shall all thy males appear before the Lord Jehovah, the God of Israel.

24 For I will cast out nations before thee, and enlarge thy borders: neither shall any man desire thy land, when thou goest up to appear before Jehovah thy God three times in the year.

25 Thou shalt not offer the blood of my sacrifice with leavened bread; neither shall the sacrifice of the feast of the passover be left unto the morning.

26 The first of the first-fruits of thy ground thou shalt bring unto the house of Jehovah thy God. Thou shalt not boil a kid in its mother's milk.

27 And Jehovah said unto Moses, Write thou these words: for after the tenor of these words I have made a covenant with thee and with Israel.

28 And he was there with Jehovah forty days and forty nights; he did neither eat bread, nor drink water. And he wrote upon the tables the words of the covenant, the ten commandments.

29 And it came to pass, when Moses came down from mount Sinai with the two tables of the testimony in Moses' hand, when he came down from the mount, that Moses knew not that the skin of his face shone by reason of his speaking with him.

30 And when Aaron and all the children of Israel saw Moses, behold, the skin of his face shone; and they were afraid to come nigh him.

31 And Moses called unto them; and Aaron and all the rulers of the congregation returned unto him: and Moses spake to them.

32 And afterward all the children of Israel came nigh: and he gave them in commandment all that Jehovah had spoken with him in mount Sinai.

33 And when Moses had done speaking with them, he put a veil on his face.

34 But when Moses went in before Jehovah to speak with him, he took the veil off, until he came out; and he came out, and spake unto the children of Israel that which he was commanded.

35 And the children of Israel saw the face of Moses, that the skin of Moses' face shone: and Moses put the veil upon his face again, until he went in to speak with him.

   

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Exodus 23:24

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24 Thou shalt not bow down to their gods, nor serve them, nor do after their works; but thou shalt utterly overthrow them, and break in pieces their pillars.

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Apocalypse Explained # 194

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194. And thou shalt not know in what hour I will come upon thee, signifies ignorance of that time and of the state then. This is evident from the signification of "hour," as being the time when man is to die, and also his state then; and from the signification of "not knowing" it, as being ignorance. It is said "In what hour I will come upon thee," namely, "as a thief," and this means, in the sense of the letter, that the Lord will so come; but in the spiritual sense, it means that evils and falsities will steal away the knowledges that they have from the Word. For in the sense of the letter of the Word doing evil is attributed to Jehovah, or to the Lord, but in the spiritual sense the meaning is that He does evil to no one, but that man does evil to himself (See Arcana Coelestia 2447, 5798, 6071, 6991, 6997, 7533, 7632, 7643, 7679, 7710, 7877, 7926, 8227, 8228, 8284, 8483, 8632, 9010, 9128, 9306, 10431).

[2] "Hour," moreover signifies state, because all times in the Word, as a day, a week, a month, a year, an age, signify states of life, so likewise "an hour" (the reason of this may be seen in the work onHeaven and Hell 162-169, where Time in Heaven is treated of). But as "hour" means both time and state, where "hour" occurs in the Word it can scarcely be known that it signifies anything except time. As in Matthew:

A householder hired laborers into his vineyard, who labored from the third hour, the sixth, the ninth, and the eleventh, and received equal reward (Matthew 20:1-16).

These "hours" mean, in the world, times, but in heaven, states of life, since in heaven there are no hours, because times there are not measurable and divided into days and these into hours, as in the world; consequently instead of these times the angels perceive the states of life of those who die, as old men, men, youths, or children, and who have equally acquired for themselves spiritual life; "laboring in the vineyard" is acquiring for oneself spiritual life by the knowledges of truth and good from the Word applied to the uses of life; the "third," the "sixth," and the "ninth hours" signify a like state of life, for all numbers in the Word are significative, and these numbers have a similar signification. (That "vineyard" in the Word signifies the spiritual church, and with man spiritual life, see Arcana Coelestia 9139, 3220. That "three" signifies a full state, or what is complete even to the end, n. 2788, 4495, 7715, 8347, 9825; likewise "six" and "nine." But "eleven" signifies a state not yet full, and yet a receptive state such as there is with well-disposed children and infants. The "twelfth hour," to which all labored, signifies truths and goods in their fullness, n. 577, 2089, 2129, 2130, 3272, 3858, 3913. That all numbers in the Word are significative, n. 4495, 4670, 5265, 6175, 9488, 9659, 10217, 10253; and that composite numbers have a signification like that of the simple numbers from which they arise by multiplication, thus "three," "six," and "nine," have a similar signification, n. 5291, 5335, 5708, 7973.)

[3] Since "twelve" signifies truths and goods in their fullness, thus man's state of light or intelligence from these, the Lord says:

Are there not twelve hours of the day? If a man walk in the day he stumbleth not (John 11:9).

Elsewhere, also, "hours" signify states of life, as in Revelation:

Those four angels were loosed, which were prepared for the hour and day and month and year, that they should kill the third part of men (Revelation 9:15).

The times here mentioned mean the states of evil with man, as will be seen in the explanation of these words hereafter. From this it is now evident that "Thou shalt not know in what hour I will come upon thee," means not only that one is ignorant of the time of death but also of the state of life at that time which will continue to eternity; for such as the state of man's past life is, even to the end, such he remains to eternity.

[4] Like things are said by the Lord here and there in the Evangelists. In Matthew:

Ye know not in what hour your Lord will come; be ye ready; for in an hour that ye think not, the Son of man cometh (Matthew 24:42, 44).

The lord of the servant shall come in the day when he expecteth not, and in an hour that he knoweth not (Matthew 24:50).

Be wakeful, therefore, for ye know not the day, neither the hour, wherein the Son of man shall come (Matthew 25:13).

It should be known that man remains to eternity such as his whole life is, even to the end, and by no means such as he is at the hour of death: repentance at that time with the evil is of no avail, but with the good it strengthens.

  
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Thanks to the Swedenborg Foundation for their permission to use this translation.