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Exodus 27

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1 And make an altar of hard wood, a square altar, five cubits long, five cubits wide and three cubits high.

2 Put horns at the four angles of it, made of the same, plating it all with brass.

3 And make all its vessels, the baskets for taking away the dust of the fire, the spades and basins and meat-hooks and fire-trays, of brass.

4 And make a network of brass, with four brass rings at its four angles.

5 And put the network under the shelf round the altar so that the net comes half-way up the altar.

6 And make rods for the altar, of hard wood, plated with brass.

7 And put the rods through the rings at the two opposite sides of the altar, for lifting it.

8 The altar is to be hollow, boarded in with wood; make it from the design which you saw on the mountain.

9 And let there be an open space round the House, with hangings for its south side of the best linen, a hundred cubits long.

10 Their twenty pillars and their twenty bases are to be of brass; the hooks of the pillars and their bands are to be of silver.

11 And on the north side in the same way, hangings a hundred cubits long, with twenty pillars of brass on bases of brass; their hooks and their bands are to be of silver.

12 And for the open space on the west side, the hangings are to be fifty cubits wide, with ten pillars and ten bases;

13 And on the east side the space is to be fifty cubits wide.

14 On the one side of the doorway will be hangings fifteen cubits long, with three pillars and three bases;

15 And on the other side, hangings fifteen cubits long, with three pillars and three bases.

16 And across the doorway, a veil of twenty cubits of the best linen, made of needlework of blue and purple and red, with four pillars and four bases.

17 All the pillars round the open space are to have silver bands, with hooks of silver and bases of brass.

18 The open space is to be a hundred cubits long, fifty cubits wide, with sides five cubits high, curtained with the best linen, with bases of brass.

19 All the instruments for the work of the House, and all its nails, and the nails of the open space are to be of brass.

20 Give orders to the children of Israel to give you clear olive oil for the lights, so that a light may be burning there at all times.

21 Let Aaron and his sons put this in order, evening and morning, before the Lord, inside the Tent of meeting, outside the veil which is before the ark; this is to be an order for ever, from generation to generation, to be kept by the children of Israel.

   

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Apocalypse Revealed # 450

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450. Having breastplates that were fiery, hyacinthine and sulfurous. This symbolizes their fanciful and illusory arguments springing from a hellish love and their own intelligence, and from the attendant lusts.

Breastplates symbolize the arguments people use to do battle for faith alone (no. 436). Fire symbolizes heavenly love, and in an opposite sense, hellish love (nos. 452, 468, 494). Hyacinthine symbolizes intelligence springing from a spiritual love, and in an opposite sense, intelligence springing from a hellish love, which is one's own inherent intelligence, as explained below. And sulfur symbolizes lust arising from that hellish love and expressed through their own inherent intelligence (no. 452). It follows from this that breastplates fiery, hyacinthine and sulfurous have the symbolic meaning stated.

[2] The reason their arguments in defense of faith alone are thus described is that all those people who believe themselves to be justified by faith alone, which is to say, absolved from sins, never give any thought to repentance, and an impenitent person engages in nothing but sins. All sins, moreover, spring from and so draw their character from a hellish love, from one's own inherent intelligence, and from the attendant lusts; and people caught up in them not only act on them, but they also speak, indeed think and will, in conformity with them, and accordingly reason and argue in conformity with them. These are who they are because they are their life; but who they are is a devil, and their life a hellish one.

In actual fact, however, people who live a moral life solely for the sake of themselves and the world do not know this. The reason is that although they inwardly are such as described, in outward appearances they are like people who live a Christian life. But they should know that when anyone of them dies, he comes into his interior life, because it is the life of his spirit, and he is his internal self. Moreover, his inner character then accommodates his outward one to itself, and they become alike. Consequently the moral virtues of these people's life in the world then become like the scales of fish that are scraped away.

The case is altogether different with people who regard the precepts of a moral life as Divine, and who make them at the same time civil precepts because they are expressive of a love for the neighbor.

[3] Hyacinthine symbolizes intelligence springing from the affection of a spiritual love because this color takes its hue from the redness of fire and the whiteness of light; and fire symbolizes love, and light intelligence. This intelligence is symbolically meant by the hyacinthine blue in the coverings and veils of the tabernacle (Exodus 26:31, 36; 27:16), and in Aaron's ephod (Exodus 28:6, 15); by the cloth of hyacinthine blue placed on the ark, table, lampstand, and altar [in the tabernacle] when the people prepared to journey (Numbers 4:6-7, 9, 11-12); and by the blue stuff in Ezekiel 27:7, 24.

On other hand, intelligence springing from the affection of a hellish love is symbolically meant by hyacinthine in Ezekiel 23:

Oholah (or Samaria) played the harlot... and she doted on her lovers, the neighboring Assyrians, clothed in hyacinthine blue..., horsemen riding on horses. (Ezekiel 23:4-6)

Thus is described a church which by the reasonings of its own inherent intelligence had falsified the Word's truths.

And in Jeremiah:

They are altogether foolish and grow stupid; the teaching of vanities is wood. Beaten silver... is brought from Tarshish..., the work of the craftsman and the hands of the metalsmith; hyacinthine blue and purple are their clothing, all the work of skillful men. (Jeremiah 10:8-9)

The work of the craftsman and the hands of the metalsmith, and all the work of skillful men, symbolize here that they spring from their own inherent intelligence.

  
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Many thanks to the General Church of the New Jerusalem, and to Rev. N.B. Rogers, translator, for the permission to use this translation.