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Genesis 35

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1 And God said to Jacob, Go up now to Beth-el and make your living-place there: and put up an altar there to the God who came to you when you were in flight from your brother Esau.

2 Then Jacob said to all his people, Put away the strange gods which are among you, and make yourselves clean, and Put on a change of clothing:

3 And let us go up to Beth-el: and there I will make an altar to God, who gave me an answer in the day of my trouble, and was with me wherever I went.

4 Then they gave to Jacob all the strange gods which they had, and the rings which were in their ears; and Jacob put them away under the holy tree at Shechem.

5 So they went on their journey: and the fear of God was on the towns round about, so that they made no attack on the sons of Jacob.

6 And Jacob came to Luz in the land of Canaan (which is the same as Beth-el), he and all his people.

7 And there he made an altar, naming the place El-beth-el: because it was there he had the vision of God when he was in flight from his brother.

8 And Deborah, the servant who had taken care of Rebekah from her birth, came to her end, and was put to rest near Beth-el, under the holy tree: and they gave it the name of Allon-bacuth.

9 Now when Jacob was on his way from Paddan-aram, God came to him again and, blessing him, said,

10 Jacob is your name, but it will be so no longer; from now your name will be Israel; so he was named Israel.

11 And God said to him, I am God, the Ruler of all: be fertile, and have increase; a nation, truly a group of nations, will come from you, and kings will be your offspring;

12 And the land which I gave to Abraham and Isaac, I will give to you; and to your seed after you I will give the land.

13 Then God went up from him in the place where he had been talking with him.

14 And Jacob put up a pillar in the place where he had been talking with God, and put a drink offering on it, and oil.

15 And he gave to the place where God had been talking with him, the name of Beth-el.

16 So they went on from Beth-el; and while they were still some distance from Ephrath, the pains of birth came on Rachel and she had a hard time.

17 And when her pain was very great, the woman who was helping her said, Have no fear; for now you will have another son.

18 And in the hour when her life went from her (for death came to her), she gave the child the name Ben-oni: but his father gave him the name of Benjamin.

19 So Rachel came to her end and was put to rest on the road to Ephrath (which is Beth-lehem).

20 And Jacob put up a pillar on her resting-place; which is named, The Pillar of the resting-place of Rachel, to this day.

21 And Israel went journeying on and put up his tents on the other side of the tower of the flock.

22 Now while they were living in that country, Reuben had connection with Bilhah, his father's servant-woman: and Israel had news of it.

23 Now Jacob had twelve sons: the sons of Leah: Reuben, Jacob's first son, and Simeon and Levi and Judah and Issachar and Zebulun;

24 The sons of Rachel: Joseph and Benjamin;

25 The sons of Bilhah, Rachel's servant: Dan and Naphtali;

26 The sons of Zilpah, Leah's servant: Gad and Asher; these are the sons whom Jacob had in Paddan-aram.

27 And Jacob came to his father Isaac at Mamre, at Kiriath-arba, that is, Hebron, where Abraham and Isaac had been living.

28 And Isaac was a hundred and eighty years old.

29 Then Isaac came to his end and was put to rest with his father's people, an old man after a long life: and Jacob and Esau, his sons, put him in his last resting-place.

   

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Arcana Coelestia # 4594

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4594. 'That is, Bethlehem' means a new spiritual of the celestial raised up in place of it. This is clear from the meaning of 'Bethlehem' as the spiritual of the celestial within the new state, for 'Ephrath' is the spiritual of the celestial within the initial state, 4585, while her burial there means the raising up of a new state, 4593. The fact that Bethlehem was the place where Rachel gave birth to her second son, Benjamin, and died in giving birth to him, also the place where David was born and where he was anointed king, and finally the place where the Lord was born, involves an arcanum which has not yet been revealed. Nor could it have been revealed to anyone who did not know what was meant by 'Ephrath' and by 'Bethlehem', and what was represented by 'Benjamin' and also by 'David'. Least of all could it have been revealed to anyone who did not know what the spiritual of the celestial was; for this is what was meant spiritually by those places and what was represented by those personages.

[2] The reason the Lord was born there and nowhere else was that He alone has been born a spiritual-celestial man. Everyone else has been born a natural man with the ability or capacity to become, through regeneration by the Lord, either celestial or spiritual. The Lord was born a spiritual-celestial man to the end that He might make His Human Divine, doing so according to order from the lowest degree to the highest, and so would bring order to everything in the heavens and everything in the hells. For the spiritual of the celestial is an intermediate part between the natural or external man and the rational or internal man, see above in 4585, 4592, so that below it there was the natural or external, and above it the rational or internal.

[3] Until he can grasp these things no one will ever come to understand in the light of any revelation at all why the Lord was born in Bethlehem. From most ancient times 'Ephrath' meant the spiritual of the celestial, as therefore did 'Bethlehem' subsequently. This now explains why the following words occur in David,

He swore to Jehovah, he made a vow to the Mighty One of Jacob, If I enter the tent of my house, if I go up onto the couch of my bed, if I give sleep to my eyes, slumber to my eyelids, until I find a place for Jehovah, dwelling-places for the Mighty One of Jacob. Behold, we heard of Him in Ephrath, we found Him in the fields of the forest; we will enter His dwelling-places, and bow down at His footstool. Psalms 132:2-7.

It is quite evident that these words are used to refer to the Lord. In the original language the pronoun 'Him' in 'we have heard of Him' and in 'we have found Him' is expressed by a letter added to the end of the verb - by the letter H, taken from the name Jehovah.

[4] And in Micah,

You, Bethlehem Ephrath, it is little that you are among the thousands of Judah; from you will come forth for Me one who will be ruler in Israel; and His origins are from of old, from the days of eternity Micah 5:2; Matthew 2:6.

From these prophecies it was well known to the Jewish people that the Messiah or Christ was to be born in Bethlehem, as is clear in Matthew,

Assembling all the chief priests and scribes of the people Herod inquired of them where the Christ (the Messiah) was to be born. They told him, In Bethlehem of Judea. Matthew 2:4-5.

And in John,

The Jews said, Does not the Scripture say that the Christ (the Messiah) is going to come from the seed of David, and from Bethlehem, the city where David was? John 7:42.

His birth did in fact take place there, see Matthew 2:1; Luke 2:4-7. For this reason also, and because He was descended from David, the Lord is called 'a shoot from the stem of Jesse', and 'the root of Jesse', Isaiah 11:1, 10. For Jesse, David's father, was a Bethlehemite, and David was born there and also anointed king there, 1 Samuel 16:1-14; 17:12, for which reason Bethlehem was called the city of David, Luke 2:4, 11; John 7:42. David in particular represents the Lord's kingship or Divine Truth, 1888.

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