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Exodus 30

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1 And you are to make an altar for the burning of perfume; of hard wood let it be made.

2 The altar is to be square, a cubit long and a cubit wide, and two cubits high, and its horns are to be made of the same.

3 It is to be plated with the best gold, the top of it and the sides and the horns, with an edging of gold all round it.

4 Under the edge on the two opposite sides, you are to make two gold rings, to take the rods for lifting it.

5 And make these rods of the same wood, plating them with gold.

6 And let it be placed in front of the veil before the ark of the law, before the cover which is over the law, where I will come face to face with you.

7 And on this altar sweet spices are to be burned by Aaron every morning when he sees to the lights.

8 And every evening, when he puts the lights up in their places, the spices are to be burned, a sweet-smelling smoke going up before the Lord from generation to generation for ever.

9 No strange perfume, no burned offering or meal offering, and no drink offering is to be offered on it.

10 And once every year Aaron is to make its horns clean: with the blood of the sin-offering he is to make it clean once every year from generation to generation: it is most holy to the Lord.

11 And the Lord said to Moses,

12 When you are taking the number of the children of Israel, let every man who is numbered give to the Lord a price for his life, so that no disease may come on them when they are numbered.

13 And this is what they are to give; let every man who is numbered give half a shekel, by the scale of the holy place: (the shekel being valued at twenty gerahs:) this money is an offering to the Lord.

14 Everyone who is numbered, from twenty years old and over, is to give an offering to the Lord.

15 The man of wealth is to give no more and the poor man no less than the half-shekel of silver, when the offering is made to the Lord as the price for your lives.

16 And you are to take this money from the children of Israel to be used for the work of the Tent of meeting, to keep the memory of the children of Israel before the Lord and to be the price of your lives.

17 And the Lord said to Moses,

18 You are to make a brass washing-vessel, with a brass base; and put it between the Tent of meeting and the altar, with water in it;

19 That it may be used by Aaron and his sons for washing their hands and feet;

20 Whenever they go into the Tent of meeting they are to be washed with water, to keep them from death; and whenever they come near to do the work of the altar, or to make an offering by fire to the Lord,

21 Their hands and feet are to be washed. so that they may be safe from death: this is an order to them for ever; to him and his seed from generation to generation.

22 And the Lord said to Moses,

23 Take the best spices, five hundred shekels' weight of liquid myrrh, and of sweet cinnamon half as much, that is, two hundred and fifty shekels, and two hundred and fifty shekels of sweet calamus,

24 And of cassia, five hundred shekels' weight measured by the scale of the holy place, and of olive oil a hin:

25 And make these into a holy oil, a perfume made by the art of the perfume-maker; it is to be a holy oil.

26 This oil is to be put on the Tent of meeting, and on the ark of the law,

27 And on the table and all its vessels, and on the support for the lights, with its vessels, and on the altar for burning spices,

28 And on the altar of burned offerings with its vessels, and on the washing-vessel and its base.

29 And you are to make them most holy; anything touching them will become holy.

30 And put the oil on Aaron and his sons, making them holy to do the work of priests to me.

31 And say to the children of Israel, This is to be the Lord's holy oil, from generation to generation.

32 It is not to be used for man's flesh, and no other is to be made like it: holy it is, and you are to keep it holy.

33 Whoever makes any like it, or puts it on one who is not a priest, will be cut off from his people.

34 And the Lord said to Moses, Take sweet spices, stacte and onycha and galbanum, with the best frankincense, in equal weights;

35 And make from them a perfume, such as is made by the art of the perfume-maker, mixed with salt, and clean and holy.

36 And put some of it, crushed very small, in front of the ark in the Tent of meeting, where I will come face to face with you; it is to be most holy.

37 You are not to make any perfume like it for yourselves: it is to be kept holy to the Lord.

38 Whoever makes any like it, for its sweet smell, will be cut off from his people.

   

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Arcana Coelestia # 10188

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10188. 'And two rings of gold you shall make for it under the rim' means the sphere of Divine Good by means of which a joining together and preservation are effected. This is clear from the meaning of 'two' as a joining together, dealt with in 5194, 8423; from the meaning of 'rings' as a Divine sphere, dealt with in 9498, 9501; from the meaning of 'gold' as good, dealt with in 9874, 9881; and from the meaning of 'the rim' as a border serving to defend from the approach of evils and the harm these can do, dealt with immediately above in 10187. From these meanings it is evident that 'two rings of gold under the rim' means the sphere of Divine Good by means of which a joining together is effected. The reason why a preservation is also meant is that the poles were inserted into the rings and then served to carry [the altar], and 'carrying' means preserving, 9900.

[2] What the sphere of Divine Good is must be stated briefly here. The sphere of Divine Good fills the whole of heaven, and also extends into hell; for it is like the sphere of the sun's heat in the world, which in summer reaches even into dark places where the sun does not appear. That Divine sphere was likened by the ancients to circles of radiating light which had God in the middle of them and angels round about. Those therefore who allow themselves to be led by the Lord, and so who receive what is Divine from Him, are in the sphere of Divine Good, to the extent that they are receptive. Those however who are not receptive are, it is true, in that same sphere; but their interiors are closed off, to such an extent that they are insensitive to its influx. For the attention of those in hell is fixed on things of an external nature and not on those of an internal nature. From these external things furthermore evils and consequent falsities emanate, which as they appear around those spirits look like a pall of smoke from a furnace. As a consequence of this the external sphere of Divine Good there loses its effectiveness, while the internal sphere nevertheless remains. Though they are unreceptive of this sphere because the way for it to come in has been closed, the Lord nevertheless rules the hells by means of it.

[3] The reason why it is the sphere of Divine Good that emanates from the Lord is that the Sun of heaven, which is the Lord, is God's love; for that is how this love manifests itself there. The heat radiating from it is the good of love, while the light radiating from it is the truth of faith. This is why in the Word the sun is used to mean God's love, its fire and heat being the good of love, and its light the truth of faith.

[4] Furthermore from each individual angel there emanates a sphere from his love, as there does also from each good or bad spirit, in keeping with their loves, though the spheres emanating from them do not extend very far. But the Divine sphere extends through all creation, for it emanates from what is inmost, and what is inmost is the all in all of the things that go out in order from it.

Regarding spheres, see what has been shown previously, in part from experience as well, in 1048, 1053, 1316, 1504-1512, 1695, 2401, 4464, 5179, 6206(end), 6598-6613, 7454, 8063, 8630, 8794, 8797, 9490-9492, 9498, 9499, 9534, 9606, 9607.

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