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Deuteronomy 34

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1 And Moses went up from the table-lands of Moab to Mount Nebo, to the top of Pisgah which is facing Jericho. And the Lord let him see all the land, the land of Gilead as far as Dan;

2 And all Naphtali and the land of Ephraim and Manasseh, and all the land of Judah, as far as the Great Sea of the west;

3 And the South, and the circle of the valley of Jericho, the town of palm-trees, as far as Zoar.

4 And the Lord said to him, This is the land about which I made an oath to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, saying, I will give it to your seed: now I have let you see it with your eyes, but you will not go in there.

5 So death came to Moses, the servant of the Lord, there in the land of Moab, as the Lord had said.

6 And the Lord put him to rest in the valley in the land of Moab opposite Beth-peor: but no man has knowledge of his resting-place to this day.

7 And Moses at his death was a hundred and twenty years old: his eye had not become clouded, or his natural force become feeble.

8 For thirty days the children of Israel were weeping for Moses in the table-lands of Moab, till the days of weeping and sorrow for Moses were ended.

9 And Joshua, the son of Nun, was full of the spirit of wisdom; for Moses had put his hands on him: and the children of Israel gave ear to him, and did as the Lord had given orders to Moses.

10 There has never been another prophet in Israel like Moses, whom the Lord had knowledge of face to face;

11 In all the signs and wonders which the Lord sent him to do in the land of Egypt, to Pharaoh and to all his servants and all his land;

12 And in all the acts of power and fear which Moses did before the eyes of all Israel.

   

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Divine Love and Wisdom # 383

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383. Since our discernment corresponds to our lungs, and our thinking therefore to their breathing, "soul" and "spirit" in the Word mean discernment, as in "you shall love the Lord your God with your whole heart and your whole soul" (Matthew 22:35 [22:37]), or "God will give a new heart and a new spirit" (Ezekiel 36:26; Psalms 51:12-13 [51:10]). I have already explained [378-381] that the heart means the love of our volition, so soul and spirit mean the wisdom of our discernment.

You may see in Teachings for the New Jerusalem on the Lord 50-51 that the spirit of God, also called the Holy Spirit, means divine wisdom and therefore divine truth, the means of our enlightenment.

This is why "the Lord breathed on the disciples and said, 'Receive the Holy Spirit'" (John 20:22). This is also why it says, "Jehovah God breathed the breath of life into Adam's nostrils, and he became a living soul" (Genesis 2:7), and why God said to the prophet, "Prophesy over the spirit and say to the wind, 'Come, spirit, from the four winds and breathe upon these who have been slain, so that they may live'" (Ezekiel 37:9). There are similar statements elsewhere as well. It is why the Lord is called the spirit of the nostrils and also the breath of life.

Since our breathing comes through our nostrils, they are used to mean perception. An intelligent person is referred to as "keen-scented," and a dense person as "dull-scented." This is also why in Hebrew and in some other languages, "spirit" and "wind" are expressed by the same word. In fact, the word "spirit" is derived from [a root that means] breathing; so when people die we speak of their "breathing their last." This is also why people believe that a spirit is a wind or something airy, like the breath that issues from our lungs, and believe the same of the soul as well.

We can tell from this that "loving God with the whole heart and with the whole soul" means with all our love and all our discernment, and that "giving a new heart and a new spirit" means a new volition and a new discernment.

It is because the spirit means discernment that it says of Bezaleel that "he was filled with the spirit of wisdom, intelligence, and knowledge" (Exodus 31:3) and of Joshua that "he was filled with the spirit of wisdom" (Deuteronomy 34:9), and that Nebuchadnezzar said of Daniel that "a superlative spirit, one of knowledge and intelligence and wisdom was in him" (Daniel 6:5 [5:11-12, 14]), and why it says in Isaiah that "those who are wandering in spirit will know intelligence" (Isaiah 29:24). Similar statements may be found in many other places.

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