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Deuteronomy 6

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1 Now these are the orders and the laws and the decisions which the Lord your God gave me for your teaching, so that you might do them in the land of your heritage to which you are going:

2 So that living in the fear of the Lord your God, you may keep all his laws and his orders, which I give you: you and your son and your son's son, all the days of your life; and so that your life may be long.

3 So give ear, O Israel, and take care to do this; so that it may be well for you, and you may be greatly increased, as the Lord the God of your fathers has given you his word, in a land flowing with milk and honey.

4 Give ear, O Israel: the Lord our God is one Lord:

5 And the Lord your God is to be loved with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.

6 Keep these words, which I say to you this day, deep in your hearts;

7 Teaching them to your children with all care, talking of them when you are at rest in your house or walking by the way, when you go to sleep and when you get up.

8 Let them be fixed as a sign on your hand, and marked on your brow;

9 Have them lettered on the pillars of your houses and over the doors of your towns.

10 And when the Lord your God has taken you into the land which he gave his oath to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, that he would give you; with great and fair towns which were not of your building;

11 And houses full of good things not stored up by you, and places for storing water which you did not make, and vine-gardens and olive-trees not of your planting; and you have taken food and are full;

12 Then take care that you keep your hearts true to the Lord, who took you out of the land of Egypt, out of the prison-house.

13 Let the fear of the Lord your God be in your hearts, and be his servants, taking your oaths by his name.

14 Do not go after other gods, the gods of the peoples round about you;

15 For the Lord your God who is with you is a God who will not let his honour be given to another; or the wrath of the Lord will be burning against you, causing your destruction from the face of the earth.

16 Do not put the Lord your God to the test as you did in Massah.

17 Keep with care the orders of the Lord your God, and his rules and his laws which he has given you;

18 And do what is upright and good in the eyes of the Lord your God, so that it may be well for you and you may go in and take for your heritage that good land from which the Lord undertook by an oath to your fathers,

19 To send out from before you all those who are against you.

20 And when your son says to you in time to come, What is the reason for these rules and laws and decisions which the Lord our God has given you?

21 Then you will say to your son, We were servants under Pharaoh's yoke in Egypt; and the Lord took us out of Egypt with a strong hand:

22 And the Lord did great signs and wonders against Egypt, and against Pharaoh and all his house, before our eyes:

23 And he took us out from that place, guiding us here to give us this land, as he said in his oath to our fathers.

24 And the Lord gave us orders to keep all these laws, in the fear of the Lord our God, so that it might be well for us for ever, and that he might keep us from death, as he has done to this day.

25 And it will be our righteousness if we take care to keep all this order before the Lord our God as he has given it to us.

   

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Arcana Coelestia # 9051

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9051. 'Eye for eye' means if anything is injured by them in the inner part of the understanding. This is clear from the meaning of 'the eye' as the understanding, in this instance the inner part of it, the life of which is the life of faith. A person's understanding has an outer part and an inner part The outer part of his understanding is where thought that enters his awareness is, whereas the inner part is where thought that does not enter his awareness is, though it enters that of the angels. This part of the understanding is what the Lord enlightens when a person receives faith, for it exists in the light of heaven and holds within it a person's spiritual life. This is not made plainly evident to the person while in the world, but it is made so to that person in the next life when he becomes an angel among angels in heaven. In the meanwhile that life lies hidden within the thought belonging to the outer part of the understanding, producing there the holiness and reverence for the Lord, for love and faith in Him, for the Word, and for everything else that is the Church's. The reason why 'the eye' means the understanding is that the eye corresponds to the understanding; for the understanding sees in the light of heaven, but the eye sees in the light of the world. The things that the former eye, that is, the understanding, sees are spiritual, and its field of vision is the factual knowledge contained in the person's memory. But the things which the physical eye sees are earthly, and its field of vision consists in every object that appears in the world. Regarding 'the eye', that in the spiritual sense it means the understanding, and also faith since faith composes the life of the inner part of the understanding, see 2701, 4403-4421, 4523-4534.

[2] Anyone who does not know that 'the eye' is used in the Word to mean the understanding cannot know what the meaning is of the things which the Lord spoke concerning the eye in the Gospels, first of all these,

If your right eye causes you to stumble, pluck it out. It is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye, than having two eyes, to be cast into the Gehenna of fire. Matthew 5:29; Mark 9:47.

Everyone recognizes that the eye should not be plucked out even if it does cause a person to stumble, and that no one enters the kingdom of God with only one eye. But 'the right eye' means falsity in a person's belief about the Lord; this is what must be plucked out. Then there are these things spoken by the Lord,

The lamp of the body is the eye. If therefore your eye is sound, your whole body will be full of light. If your eye is evil your whole body will be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in you is darkness, how great is the darkness! Matthew 6:22-23; Luke 11:34.

Nor is 'the eye' used here to mean the eye, but an understanding composed of the truth of faith. This is why the eye is called 'the lamp of the body' and why the Lord says, 'If the light that is in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!' For 'darkness' in the spiritual sense is falsities constituting faith, 1839, 1860, 4418, 4531, 7688, 7711.

[3] There are these words too spoken by Him,

Why do you notice the speck which is in your brother's eye, but do not consider the plank that is in your own eye? Matthew 7:3-5.

'Noticing a speck in a brother's eye' means seeing something erroneous in a person's understanding of truth; 'the plank in one's own eye' is huge evil of falsity, since 'wood' in the internal sense means good and in the contrary sense evil, 643, 2784, 2812, 3720, 8354. Good is also represented in the next life by a plank, which is why those who pretend to have good within themselves are seen carrying a plank, walking in safety as they do so. If 'eye' and 'plank' did not have these meanings, would 'seeing a plank in an eye' have any meaning at all? If it is not known that 'eye' in the Word means the understanding of truth, which is faith, neither can it be known what is implied by the Lord's action when He healed the blind man,

He spat on the ground and made clay with His saliva, and said to him, Go, wash in the pool of Siloam. John 9:6-7.

Since all the Lord's miracles, like all Divine miracles, had to do with those things that belong to the Lord's kingdom and the Church, 7337, 8364, so did this miracle too.

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