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Exodus 23

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1 Do not let a false statement go further; do not make an agreement with evil-doers to be a false witness.

2 Do not be moved to do wrong by the general opinion, or give the support of your words to a wrong decision:

3 But, on the other hand, do not be turned from what is right in order to give support to a poor man's cause.

4 If you come across the ox or the ass of one who is no friend to you wandering from its way, you are to take it back to him.

5 If you see the ass of one who has no love for you bent down to the earth under the weight which is put on it, you are to come to its help, even against your desire.

6 Let no wrong decisions be given in the poor man's cause.

7 Keep yourselves far from any false business; never let the upright or him who has done no wrong be put to death: for I will make the evil-doer responsible for his sin.

8 Take no rewards in a cause: for rewards make blind those who have eyes to see, and make the decisions of the upright false.

9 Do not be hard on the man from a strange country who is living among you; for you have had experience of the feelings of one who is far from the land of his birth, because you yourselves were living in Egypt, in a strange land.

10 For six years put seed into your fields and get in the increase;

11 But in the seventh year let the land have a rest and be unplanted; so that the poor may have food from it: and let the beasts of the field take the rest. Do the same with your vine-gardens and your olive-trees.

12 For six days do your work, and on the seventh day keep the Sabbath; so that your ox and your ass may have rest, together with the son of your servant and the man from a strange land living among you.

13 Take note of all these things which I have said to you, and let not the names of other gods come into your minds or from your lips.

14 Three times in the year you are to keep a feast to me.

15 You are to keep the feast of unleavened bread; for seven days let your bread be without leaven, as I gave you orders, at the regular time in the month Abib (for in it you came out of Egypt); and let no one come before me without an offering:

16 And the feast of the grain-cutting, the first-fruits of your planted fields: and the feast at the start of the year, when you have got in all the fruit from your fields.

17 Three times in the year let all your males come before the Lord God.

18 Do not give the blood of my offering with leavened bread; and do not let the fat of my feast be kept all night till the morning.

19 The best of the first-fruits of your land are to be taken into the house of the Lord your God. The young goat is not to be cooked in its mother's milk.

20 See, I am sending an angel before you, to keep you on your way and to be your guide into the place which I have made ready for you.

21 Give attention to him and give ear to his voice; do not go against him; for your wrongdoing will not be overlooked by him, because my name is in him.

22 But if you truly give ear to his voice, and do whatever I say, then I will be against those who are against you, fighting those who are fighting you.

23 And my angel will go before you, guiding you into the land of the Amorite and the Hittite and the Perizzite and the Canaanite and the Hivite and the Jebusite, and they will be cut off by my hand.

24 Do not go down on your faces and give worship to their gods, or do as they do; but overcome them completely, and let their pillars be broken down.

25 And give worship to the Lord your God, who will send his blessing on your bread and on your water; and I will take all disease away from among you.

26 All your animals will give birth without loss, not one will be without young in all your land; I will give you a full measure of life.

27 I will send my fear before you, putting to flight all the people to whom you come; all those who are against you will go in flight, turning their backs before you.

28 I will send hornets before you, driving out the Hivite and the Canaanite and the Hittite before your face.

29 I will not send them all out in one year, for fear that their land may become waste, and the beasts of the field be increased overmuch against you.

30 Little by little I will send them away before you, till your numbers are increased and you take up your heritage in the land.

31 I will let the limits of your land be from the Red Sea to the sea of the Philistines, and from the waste land to the river Euphrates: for I will give the people of those lands into your power; and you will send them out before you.

32 Make no agreement with them or with their gods.

33 Let them not go on living in your land, or they will make you do evil against me: for if you give worship to their gods, it will certainly be a cause of sin to you.

   

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Arcana Coelestia # 9333

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9333. I will not drive him out from before thee in one year. That this signifies no hasty flight or removal of them, namely, of the falsities and evils which are signified by the nations in the land of Canaan, is evident from the signification of “driving out,” as being flight, for in the other life those who are in evils and falsities are not driven out, but flee of themselves (that removal also is signified will be seen below); and from the signification of “in one year,” as being what is hasty; for the words follow, “by little and little I will drive him out from before thee,” by which is signified removal by degrees according to order.

[2] That when predicated of evils and falsities, “to drive out” denotes removal, is because falsities and evils are not driven out from a man, but are removed. He who does not know how the case is with man’s liberation from evils and falsities, or with the forgiveness of his sins, may believe that sins are wiped away when they are said to be forgiven. This belief comes from the literal sense of the Word, where such an expression is sometimes used, giving rise in the minds of many to the error that after they have received absolution they are righteous and pure. But these people know nothing whatever about the way in which sins are forgiven; namely, that a man is not purified from them; but is withheld from them by the Lord when he is of such a character that he can be kept in good and truth; and that he can be kept in good and truth when he has been regenerated; for he has then acquired a life of the good of charity and the truth of faith. For whatever a man, from his earliest infancy, thinks, wills, speaks, and does, is added to his life and makes it. These things cannot be exterminated, but only removed, and when they are removed, the man appears as if he were devoid of sins, because they have been removed (n. 8393, 8988, 9014). In accordance with the appearance that man thinks and does what is good and true from himself, when yet it is not from himself but from the Lord, it has been said in the Word that he is “clean” from sins, and also “righteous;” as in Isaiah:

Though your sins have been as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they have been red like crimson, they shall be as wool (Isaiah 1:18);

and in many other passages.

[3] That such is the case has been granted me to know from the state of souls in the other life. Everyone brings with him there from the world all things of his life, that is, whatsoever he has thought, wished, spoken, and done; and even whatever he has seen and heard from his infancy down to the end of his life in the world, insomuch that there is not even the smallest thing lacking (n. 2474). Those who in the world have lived a life of faith and charity, can then be withheld from evils and kept in good, and thus be raised into heaven. But those who in the world have not led a life of faith and charity, but a life of the love of self and of the love of the world, sink down into hell, because they cannot be withheld from evils and kept in good. From all this it is evident why, when “driving out” is said in relation to falsities and evils, it denotes removal. In this verse and the next this removal is treated of in the internal sense, and its arcana are there disclosed.

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