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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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Arcana Coelestia # 10692

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10692. 'And Aaron and all the children of Israel saw Moses' means what is discerned by those whose interest lies in things of the Church, worship, and the Word on an outward level devoid of those on the inward level. This is clear from the meaning of 'seeing' as discerning, dealt with in 2150, 3764, 4567, 4723, 5400; and from the representation of 'Aaron and the children of Israel', in this and the two previous chapters, as those interested solely in things of the Church, worship, and the Word on an outward level and not in those on an inward one.

For this representation of Aaron, see 10397.

For this representation of the children of Israel, see in the places referred to in 9380, 10396; and in addition what is said in 10430, 10453-10457, 10461-10466, 10492, 10498, 10500, 10526, 10531, 10533, 10535, 10549-10551, 10566, 10570, 10575, 10603, 10629, 10632.

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

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Arcana Coelestia # 10396

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10396. 'And the people saw that Moses delayed to come down from the mountain' means the Israelite nation, when they did not discern in the Word anything from heaven. This is clear from the meaning of 'seeing', when it refers to the understanding of the Word, as discernment, dealt with in 2150, 3764, 3863, 4567, 4723, 5400; from the representation of 'Moses' as the Word, dealt with in the places referred to in 9372; from the meaning of 'delaying to come down', when this refers to discernment of Divine Truth obtained from the Word, as not flowing in, for Divine Truth which flows in and resides with a person is said to come down from heaven; and from the meaning of 'Mount Sinai' as heaven in respect of Divine Truth, dealt with in 9420. 'The people' is used here literally to mean the Israelite nation; for this chapter deals with that nation, with what it was like in its discernment of Divine Truth obtained from the Word, and in its discernment of the inner realities that were represented within the things which Jehovah commanded the children of Israel from Mount Sinai through Moses - the things contained in the previous chapters, Exodus 25-Exodus 31 inclusive. From all this it is clear that 'the people saw that Moses delayed to come down from the mountain' means the Israelite nation, when they did not discern in the Word anything from heaven, nor for this reason anything that was represented in the measures commanded from Mount Sinai, that is, the inner realities.

[2] The situation in all this is that the subject in the chapters immediately before has been the statutes, judgements, and laws which Jehovah commanded the children of Israel, among whom a Church was to be established. Each one of these was an external regulation representing something internal, as has been shown in the explanations of those chapters. But the character of the Israelite nation was such that they did not wish to know anything whatever about the inner realities that were represented, only about the outward forms that served to represent them. The reason why that nation was like this was that they were ruled completely by bodily and earthly kinds of love; and with those who are ruled by those kinds of love their interiors, which would otherwise lie open to heaven, are closed off. Everyone has an internal and an external; the internal exists for heaven's purposes, and the external for the world's purposes. When the external is dominant, worldly, bodily, and earthly interests reign; but when the internal is dominant, heavenly ones do so. The human being has been created in such a way however that the external may be subordinate to the internal, thus the world within him may be subordinate to heaven; for as has been stated, the external exists for the world's purposes, and the internal for heaven's. When therefore the external is dominant the internal is closed, because then a person turns himself away from heaven and the Lord towards the world and self; and the place he turns to is where his heart is, consequently where his love is and together with that love the whole of his life, since a person's life consists in his love.

[3] These things have been mentioned in order that people may know what the situation is with those who are ruled by bodily and earthly kinds of love, namely that such people's interiors are closed off; and those whose interiors are closed off do not acknowledge anything internal. Only those things which they see with their eyes or touch with their hands they say exist, and all else which they do not see with their eyes or touch with their hands they say do not exist. Consequently they have no belief at all in the existence of heaven, in life after death, or in the inner realities taught by the Church. This was what the Israelite nation was like; and the present chapter shows that they were such.

[4] Anyone who does not know that inner realities compose the Church with a person, and not outward things without them, cannot do other than suppose that this nation was chosen and also loved by Jehovah in preference to all others. But the truth of the matter is entirely different. They were accepted because they insisted on it, yet not in order that any Church might exist among them, only what was representative of a Church, to the end that the Word could be written, with such things constituting its lowest level. The reason why in the Word that nation is called Jehovah's people, the nation chosen and loved [by Him], is that in it Judah is used to mean the celestial Church, Israel the spiritual Church, and each son of Jacob some aspect of the Church. Furthermore Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob serve to mean the Lord Himself, and so do Moses, Aaron, and David. But since the subject in the whole of this chapter is that nation, and the fact that no Church could be established among them, only what was representative of a Church, please see, before anything further is presented, what has been stated and shown previously regarding that nation,

No Church existed with that nation, only what was representative of a Church, 4281, 4288, 4311, 4500, 4899, 4912, 6304, 7048, 9320.

Thus they were not chosen, only accepted because they insisted on it, 4290, 4293, 7051, 7439.

They were entirely restricted to external things devoid of anything internal, 4293, 4311, 4459(end), 4834, 4844, 4847, 4865, 4868, 4874, 4903, 4913, 9320, 9373, 9380, 9381.

Their worship was merely external, 3147, 3479, 8871.

Nor did they wish to know about the inner things of worship and of the Word, 3479, 4429, 4433, 4680.

Therefore they were not allowed to know those things, 301, 302, 304, 2520, 3769.

If they had known them they would have rendered them profane, 3398, 3489, 4289.

Nevertheless through the outward things of worship among them, which were representative of inner realities, there was contact with heaven, and in what way, 4311, 4444, 6304, 8588, 8788, 8806.

When they were engaged in worship their interiors, which were foul, were closed, 3480, 9962.

This was possible among that nation, which is why they have been preserved even to the present day, 3479, 4281, 6588, 9377.

They worshipped Jehovah, but no more than His name, 3732(end), 4299, 6877.

At heart they were idolaters, 4208, 4281, 4820, 5998, 6877, 7401, 8301, 8882.

In general, they were the worst nation, 4314, 4316, 4317, 4444, 4503, 4750, 4751, 4815, 4820, 4832, 5057, 7248, 8819, 9320.

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