Bible

 

Exodus 34

Studie

   

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.

   

Bible

 

Exodus 23:24

Studie

       

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.

Ze Swedenborgových děl

 

Arcana Coelestia # 4424

Prostudujte si tuto pasáž

  
/ 10837  
  

4424. What the Lord's words quoted above embody in the internal sense becomes clear without explanation, for at this point the Lord uses comparisons rather than representatives and meaningful signs. Only the meaning of the words of the final verse has to be stated - 'He will cut him off and assign him his part with the hypocrites, where there is wailing and gnashing of teeth'.

He will cut him off means separation and removal from goods and truths, for people who have a knowledge of what is good and true, as those within the Church do, but who lead a life of evil are said to be cut off when that knowledge is removed from them; for in the next life their knowledge of good and truth is separated from them and they are restricted to evils and derivative falsities also. The reason why this takes place is so that they do not communicate with heaven through their knowledge of good and truth and with hell through their evil and consequent falsity, and thereby are left hanging between the two. A further reason is so that they do not profane goods and truths, as happens when these are mixed together with falsities and evils. The same is also meant by the Lord's words addressed to the one who hid his talent in the earth,

Take the talent from him and give it to him who has ten talents, for to everyone who has, it will be given, so that he may have in abundance; but from him who has not, even what he has will be taken away. Matthew 25:28-29.

And what the Lord says elsewhere has the same meaning - Matthew 13:12; also Mark 4:25, and Luke 8:18.

[2] And assign him his part with the hypocrites means that his lot, meant by 'part', lies with those who outwardly give the appearance of knowing the truth so far as doctrine is concerned, and of cherishing good so far as life is concerned, but who inwardly have no belief at all in truth nor any desire at all for good, who are 'the hypocrites'. People like this have become 'cut off' in the sense described here. Consequently when external things are taken away from these people, as happens to all in the next life, they are seen to be what they are like internally - people devoid of faith and charity. Yet they have pretended to have these, so that, capturing the attention of others, they could earn themselves positions of importance, monetary gain, and reputation. Within the Church that has become ruined virtually everyone is like this, for they have things that are external but none that are internal. Hence the interior aspects of those people are engulfed in the deluge described immediately above in 4423.

[3] Where there will be wailing and gnashing of teeth means their state in the next life, 'wailing' that state as regards evils, and 'gnashing of teeth' that state as regards falsities, for 'teeth' in the Word means lowest natural things - in the genuine sense truths going with these, and in the contrary sense falsities going with them. Teeth also correspond to those things. For these reasons 'the gnashing of teeth' means the clash of falsities and truths. People immersed in wholly natural things and governed by ideas resulting from sensory illusions, believing nothing which they do not see by means of these, are said to be where there is 'the gnashing of teeth', and in the next life seem to themselves to be there when they draw conclusions about the truths of faith on the basis of their own illusions. A Church in which good and truth have been brought to ruin teems with people such as these. The same is meant again in other places by the gnashing of teeth, as in Matthew,

The sons of the kingdom will be thrown into outer darkness, where there will be wailing and gnashing of teeth. Matthew 8:12.

'The sons of the kingdom' means those within the ruined Church.

'Darkness' means falsities, 4418, for they are in darkness when surrounded by the dark cloud mentioned above. 'The gnashing of teeth' means the clash of falsities with truths there. The same matter occurs in other places, such as Matthew 13:42, 50; 22:13; 25:30; and Luke 13:28.

  
/ 10837  
  

Thanks to the Swedenborg Society for the permission to use this translation.