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Matthew 4

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1 Then Jesus was sent by the Spirit into the waste land to be tested by the Evil One.

2 And after going without food for forty days and forty nights, he was in need of it.

3 And the Evil One came and said to him, If you are the Son of God, give the word for these stones to become bread.

4 But he made answer and said, It is in the Writings, Bread is not man's only need, but every word which comes out of the mouth of God.

5 Then the Evil One took him to the holy town; and he put him on the highest point of the Temple and said to him,

6 If you are the Son of God, let yourself go down; for it is in the Writings, He will give his angels care over you; and, In their hands they will keep you up, so that your foot may not be crushed against a stone.

7 Jesus said to him, Again it is in the Writings, You may not put the Lord your God to the test.

8 Again, the Evil One took him up to a very high mountain, and let him see all the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them;

9 And he said to him, All these things will I give you, if you will go down on your face and give me worship.

10 Then said Jesus to him, Away, Satan: for it is in the Writings, Give worship to the Lord your God and be his servant only.

11 Then the Evil One went away from him, and angels came and took care of him.

12 Now when it came to his ears that John had been put in prison, he went away to Galilee;

13 And going away from Nazareth, he came and made his living-place in Capernaum, which is by the sea, in the country of Zebulun and Naphtali:

14 So that the word of the prophet Isaiah might come true,

15 The land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali, by the way of the sea, the other side of Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles,

16 The people who were in the dark saw a great light, and to those in the land of the shade of death did the dawn come up.

17 From that time Jesus went about preaching and saying, Let your hearts be turned from sin, for the kingdom of heaven is near.

18 And when he was walking by the sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon, whose other name was Peter, and Andrew, his brother, who were putting a net into the sea; for they were fishermen.

19 And he said to them, Come after me, and I will make you fishers of men.

20 And straight away they let go the nets and went after him.

21 And going on from there he saw two other brothers, James, the son of Zebedee, and John, his brother, in the boat with their father, stitching up their nets; and he said, Come.

22 And they went straight from the boat and their father and came after him.

23 And Jesus went about in all Galilee, teaching in their Synagogues and preaching the good news of the kingdom, and making well those who were ill with any disease among the people.

24 And news of him went out through all Syria; and they took to him all who were ill with different diseases and pains, those having evil spirits and those who were off their heads, and those who had no power of moving. And he made them well.

25 And there went after him great numbers from Galilee and Decapolis and Jerusalem and Judaea and from the other side of Jordan.

   

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Arcana Coelestia # 1444

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1444. 'And the Canaanite was at that time in the land' means the hereditary evil from the mother, in His external man. This becomes clear from what has been stated already about the Lord's heredity; for He was born as any other is born and from the mother acquired evils which He fought against and overcame. It is well known that the Lord underwent and endured very severe temptations - which will in the Lord's Divine mercy be described further on - temptations so great in fact that He fought by Himself and from His own power against the whole of hell. Nobody can undergo temptation unless he has evil clinging to him. The person who has no evil cannot experience the smallest temptation, for it is evil that spirits from hell stir up.

[2] With the Lord no evil of His own doing or that was His own was present, as there is with all human beings, only hereditary evil from the mother, which is here called 'the Canaanite at that time in the land'. For this matter see what has been stated above in verse 1, in 1414, to the effect that people are born with two heredities in them, the first from the father, the second from the mother. What comes from the father remains for ever, but what comes from the mother is dispelled by the Lord when the person is being regenerated. The Lord's heredity from His Father however was Divine, while the heredity from the mother was the hereditary evil referred to here, through which He underwent temptations. Regarding His temptations, see Mark 1:12-13; Matthew 4:1; Luke 4:1-2. But, as has been stated, He had no evil of His own doing or which was His own, nor did He have any hereditary evil from the mother after He had overcome hell by means of temptations. It is for this reason that the expression at that time occurs here, that is to say, 'the Canaanite was at that time in the land'.

[3] The Canaanites were people who dwelt by the sea and by the bank of the Jordan, as is clear in Moses,

The spies returned and said, We came into the land to which you sent us, and it is indeed flowing with milk and honey, and this is its fruit. Nevertheless the people dwelling in the land are powerful and the cities are very strongly fortified, and also we saw the descendants of Anak there. The Amalekite dwells in the south, and the Hittite, Jebusite, and Amorite dwell in the mountains, and the Canaanite dwells by the sea and by the bank of the Jordan. Numbers 13:27-29.

'The Canaanite dwelt by the sea and by the bank of the Jordan' meant evil consequently residing with the external man, such as that acquired by heredity from the mother, for the sea and the Jordan were boundaries.

[4] That this kind of evil is meant by 'the Canaanite' is clear also in Zechariah,

And there will no longer be a Canaanite in the house of Jehovah Zebaoth on that day. Zechariah 14:21.

This refers to the Lord's kingdom. It means that the Lord overcame the evil meant by 'the Canaanite' and drove it out of His kingdom. Evils of every kind are meant by the idolatrous nations in the land of Canaan, among which were the Canaanites, Genesis 15:19-21; Exodus 3:8, 17; 23:23, 28; 33:2; 34:11; Deuteronomy 7:1; 20:17; Joshua 3:10; 24:11; Judges 3:5. Which evil is meant by each nation specifically will in the Lord's Divine mercy be stated elsewhere.

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