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Genesis 15

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1 After these things, the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision, saying, Have no fear, Abram: I will keep you safe, and great will be your reward.

2 And Abram said, What will you give me? for I have no child and this Eliezer of Damascus will have all my wealth after me.

3 And Abram said, You have given me no child, and a servant in my house will get the heritage.

4 Then said the Lord, This man will not get the heritage, but a son of your body will have your property after you.

5 And he took him out into the open air, and said to him, Let your eyes be lifted to heaven, and see if the stars may be numbered; even so will your seed be.

6 And he had faith in the Lord, and it was put to his account as righteousness.

7 And he said to him, I am the Lord, who took you from Ur of the Chaldees, to give you this land for your heritage.

8 And he said, O Lord God, how may I be certain that it will be mine?

9 And he said, Take a young cow of three years old, and a she-goat of three years old, and a sheep of three years old, and a dove and a young pigeon.

10 All these he took, cutting them in two and putting one half opposite the other, but not cutting the birds in two.

11 And evil birds came down on the bodies, but Abram sent them away.

12 Now when the sun was going down, a deep sleep came on Abram, and a dark cloud of fear.

13 And he said to Abram, Truly, your seed will be living in a land which is not theirs, as servants to a people who will be cruel to them for four hundred years;

14 But I will be the judge of that nation whose servants they are, and they will come out from among them with great wealth.

15 As for you, you will go to your fathers in peace; at the end of a long life you will be put in your last resting-place.

16 And in the fourth generation they will come back here; for at present the sin of the Amorite is not full.

17 Then when the sun went down and it was dark, he saw a smoking fire and a flaming light which went between the parts of the bodies.

18 In that day the Lord made an agreement with Abram, and said, To your seed have I given this land from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates:

19 The Kenite, the Kenizzite, and the Kadmonite,

20 And the Hittite, and the Perizzite, and the Rephaim,

21 And the Amorite, and the Canaanite, and the Girgashite, and the Jebusite.

   

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Arcana Coelestia # 1843

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1843. Thy seed shall be a stranger. That this signifies that charity and faith shall be rare, is evident from the signification of “a stranger,” and of “seed.” A “stranger” or “sojourner” signifies one that is not born in the land, so that he is not acknowledged as a native, and thus is looked upon as an alien. But “seed” signifies charity and its faith (as before shown, n. 255, 1025 verse 3). Because that is called “strange” which is looked upon as alien, and alien is that which is not in the land or of the land, it follows that it is that which is rare; and consequently it here means that charity and the faith of charity, which are the “seed,” will be rare. It is the time before the consummation that is here treated of, when there shall be “great darkness,” that is, falsities; the seed shall then be a stranger, that is, charity and faith will then be rare.

[2] That faith would be rare in the last times was foretold by the Lord when He spoke of the consummation of the age (Matthew 24:4-51; Mark 13:3-37; Luke 21:7-38), where everything that is said implies that charity and faith will be rare at those times, and that at last there will be none. The like is said by John in Revelation, and also in many passages of the Prophets, besides what is said in the historical parts of the Word.

[3] But by the faith that will perish in the last times there is meant nothing but charity, for there cannot possibly be any faith but the faith of charity. He who has not charity cannot have any faith at all, for charity is the very soil in which faith is implanted; it is its heart, from which it exists and lives. The ancients therefore compared love and charity to the heart, and faith to the lungs, both of which are in the breast. This comparison involves a real likeness, seeing that if a man should pretend to a life of faith without charity, it would be like having life from the lungs alone without the heart, which is manifestly impossible; and therefore the ancients called all things that pertain to charity things of the heart, and all things that pertain to faith without charity they said were of the mouth only, or of the lungs by the influx of the breathing into the speech. Thence came the ancient forms of speech concerning good and truth; that they must go forth from the heart.

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