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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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Arcana Coelestia # 9905

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9905. 'And you shall put into the breastplate of judgement the Urim and Thummim' means the radiance of Divine Truth from the Lord in last and lowest things. This is clear from the meaning of 'the breastplate of judgement' as Divine Truth shining forth from the Lord's Divine Good, dealt with in 9857; and from the meaning of 'the Urim and Thummim' as the light and radiance from there. The reason why light and radiance are meant by 'the Urim and Thummim' is that through the stones in the breastplate varying radiations of the light of heaven were emitted, these being determined by the answers given through them. This also explains why they assumed different colours. For the Divine Truth emanating from the Lord's Divine Good manifests itself to the angels as light; it is the source of all the light of heaven. The colours from it, which are modifications of that light among the angels, are variations of intelligence and wisdom among them; for all wisdom and intelligence is a product of that Divine Truth or light. From this it may be recognized that radiations of that light in various colours are the medium through which Divine Truths coming as answers present themselves in the heavens. A similar function was served by the Urim and Thummim when God was asked something. But it should be remembered that whenever a radiance was seen in them the answer was declared at the same time by an audible voice. This declaration was made through angels, to whom what they declared had been revealed by the Lord through such a radiance; for as has been stated, this is how Divine Truths coming as answers present themselves in heaven.

[2] The light of heaven is Divine Truth emanating from the Lord's Divine Good, see 1053, 1521-1533, 1619-1632, 2776, 3094, 3138, 3167, 3190, 3195, 3222, 3223, 3337, 3339, 3341, 3636, 3643, 3862, 3993, 4060, 4180, 4302, 4408, 4414, 4415, 4419, 4527, 4598, 5400, 6032, 6313, 6315, 6608, 6907, 7174, 8644, 8707, 8861, 9399, 9407, 9570, 9571 (end).

Colours appear in heaven, being modifications of that light among the angels, and so variations of intelligence and wisdom among them, 3993, 4530, 4677, 4742, 4922, 9466, 9467, 9865.

[3] The meaning of the words 'Urim' and 'Thummim' also goes to show that all this is so; for 'Urim' means a shining fire, and 'Thummim' the radiance from it. A shining fire is the Divine Truth emanating from the Divine Good of the Lord's Divine Love, and the radiance is that Truth on last and lowest levels, thus in effects. It should be recognized however that 'Thummim' in the Hebrew language means wholeness; it is in the angelic language that it means radiance. The expression 'in the angelic language' is used because when angels talk to one another they are thinking of the very essence of some matter as perceived deep within themselves, thus they speak in terms of its essential nature. What they express flows from those insights into appropriate sounds audible to the angels alone. The appropriate sound for the radiance of Divine Truth is Thummim. This then is the source of the term. Angels have a similar understanding of the word thum, meaning that which is whole or wholeness, whenever someone reads it in the Hebrew language. This explains why in the internal sense of the Word 'that which is whole' is used to mean Divine Truth on the level of effects, which is a life led in keeping with Divine commandments, as is made clear in a large number of places in the Word, such as Joshua 24:14; Judges 9:16, 19; Psalms 25:21; 37:37; 84:11; 101:2; 119:1.

[4] This also explains why the Urim and Thummim are called the judgement of the children of Israel, as well as the breastplate of judgement, and also the judgement of the Urim; for 'judgement' means Divine Truth in doctrine and life, see above in 9857. From all this it may now become clear that by means of the Urim and Thummim, that is, by means of the radiance produced by the light of heaven, the breastplate revealed Divine Truths in the natural sphere, thus on last and lowest levels. A like radiance also presents itself in the minds of those who are guided by truths springing from good. This radiance declares to them, so to speak provides the answers, when with heartfelt desire they seek to know what is true and love it as that which is good. That this kind of radiance is the means by which Divine Truth from heaven is revealed in the natural man of those who are enlightened by the Word is something which the world has no idea of, because the world does not know of any light from heaven that shines in the human understanding. But I have been allowed to realize and actually see that all this is so.

[5] In addition it should be recognized that this radiance appears on last and lowest levels because all forms of light from the Divine reach right down to the furthest ends; and since they reach down that far they also shine in them and from them. This now explains why the breastplate was placed over the ephod and above the girdle of it; for the ephod represented Divine Truth on last and lowest levels, 9824, while its girdle represented a common bond that existed to hold all things in connection, 9828, 9837. This is why verse 28 of the present chapter says, And they shall tie the breastplate from its rings to the rings of the ephod, so that it is above the girdle of the ephod and the breastplate will not come away from upon the ephod. The reason why the names of the sons of Israel were in addition engraved [on the stones] was that the twelve tribes also represented all aspects of Divine Good and Truth in the heavens, consequently heaven and all the communities there, though that representation varied according to the order in which they are mentioned in the Word, see 3858, 3862, 3926, 3939, 4060, 4603, 6335, 6337, 6397, 6640, 7836, 7891, 7973, 7996, 7997.

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