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Numbers 34

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1 And the Lord said to Moses,

2 Give orders to the children of Israel and say to them, When you come into the land of Canaan; (this is the land which is to be your heritage, the land of Canaan inside these limits,)

3 Then your south quarter will be from the waste land of Zin by the side of Edom, and your limit on the south will be from the east end of the Salt Sea,

4 And round to the south of the slope of Akrabbim, and on to Zin: and its direction will be south of Kadesh-barnea, and it will go as far as Hazar-addar and on to Azmon:

5 And from Azmon it will go round to the stream of Egypt as far as the sea.

6 And for your limit on the west you will have the Great Sea and its edge: this will be your limit on the west.

7 And your limit on the north will be the line from the Great Sea to Mount Hor:

8 And from Mount Hor the line will go in the direction of Hamath; the farthest point of it will be at Zedad:

9 And the limit will go on to Ziphron, with its farthest point at Hazar-enan: this will be your limit on the north.

10 And on the east, your limit will be marked out from Hazar-enan to Shepham,

11 Going down from Shepham to Riblah on the east side of Ain, and on as far as the east side of the sea of Chinnereth:

12 And so down to Jordan, stretching to the Salt Sea: all the land inside these limits will be yours.

13 And Moses gave orders to the children of Israel saying, This is the land which is to be your heritage, by the decision of the Lord, which by the Lord's order is to be given to the nine tribes and the half-tribe:

14 For the tribe of the children of Reuben, by their fathers' families, and the tribe of the children of Gad, by their fathers' families, and the half-tribe of Manasseh, have been given their heritage:

15 The two tribes and the half-tribe have been given their heritage on the other side of Jordan at Jericho, on the east looking to the dawn.

16 And the Lord said to Moses,

17 These are the names of the men who are to make the distribution of the land among you: Eleazar the priest and Joshua, the son of Nun.

18 And you are to take one chief from every tribe to make the distribution of the land.

19 And these are the names of the men: of the tribe of Judah, Caleb, the son of Jephunneh.

20 And of the tribe of the children of Simeon, Shemuel, the son of Ammihud.

21 Of the tribe of Benjamin, Elidad, the son of Chislon.

22 And of the tribe of the children of Dan, a chief, Bukki, the son of Jogli.

23 Of the children of Joseph: of the tribe of the children of Manasseh, a chief, Hanniel, the son of Ephod:

24 And of the tribe of the children of Ephraim, a chief, Kemuel, the son of Shiphtan.

25 And of the tribe of the children of Zebulun, a chief, Elizaphan, the son of Parnach.

26 And of the tribe of the children of Issachar, a chief, Paltiel, the son of Azzan.

27 And of the tribe of the children of Asher, a chief, Ahihud, the son of Shelomi.

28 And of the tribe of the children of Naphtali, a chief, Pedahel, the son of Ammihud.

29 These are they to whom the Lord gave orders to make the distribution of the heritage among the children of Israel in the land of Canaan.

   

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Arcana Coelestia # 1585

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1585. 'And he saw all the plain of Jordan' means the goods and truths that resided with the external man. This is clear from the meaning of 'a plain' and of 'the Jordan'. In the internal sense 'the plain surrounding the Jordan' means the external man as regards all his goods and truths. The reason the plain of Jordan has this meaning is that the Jordan was a boundary of the land of Canaan. 'The land of Canaan', as stated and shown already, means the Lord's kingdom and Church, and in particular its celestial and spiritual things; this also explains why it was called the Holy Land, and the heavenly Canaan. And because it means the Lord's kingdom and Church, it means in the highest sense the Lord Himself, who is the All in all of His kingdom and of His Church.

[2] For this reason all things in the land of Canaan were representative. Those in the midst of the land, or that were inmost, represented His internal Man - Mount Zion and Jerusalem, for example, representing respectively celestial things and spiritual things. More outlying districts represented things more remote from internals. And the most outlying districts, or those which formed the boundaries, represented the external man. There were several boundaries to the land of Canaan, but in general they were the two rivers Euphrates and Jordan, and also the Sea, 1 for which reason the Euphrates and the Jordan represented external things. Here therefore 'the plain of Jordan' means, as it also represents, all things residing in the external man. The meaning of the land of Canaan is similar when used in reference to the Lord's kingdom in heaven, to the Lord's Church on earth, to the member of that kingdom or Church, or abstractly to the celestial things of love, and so on.

[3] Almost all the cities therefore, and indeed all the mountains, hills, valleys, rivers, and other features in the land of Canaan, were representative. The river Euphrates, being a boundary, represented, as shown already in 120, sensory evidence and facts that belong to the external man, and so too did the Jordan and the plain of Jordan, as becomes clear from the following places: In David,

O my God, my soul bows itself down within me; 2 therefore I remember You from the land of Jordan, and the Hermons from the little mountain. Psalms 42:6.

Here 'the land of Jordan' stands for that which is lowly and so is distant from the celestial, as a person's externals are from his internals.

[4] The crossing of the Jordan when the children of Israel entered the land of Canaan and the dividing of its waters at that time also represented the approach to the internal man by way of the external, as well as a person's entry into the Lord's kingdom, and much more besides, Joshua 3:14 on to the end of Chapter 4. And because the external man is constantly hostile towards the internal and strives for domination over it, the arrogance or the pride of the Jordan came to be phrases used by the Prophets, as in Jeremiah,

How will you compete with horses? And confident in a land of peace how do you deal with the pride of the Jordan? Jeremiah 12:5.

'The pride of the Jordan' stands for those things belonging to the external man which rear up and wish to have dominion over the internal, such as reasonings, meant here by 'horses', and 'the confidence' they give.

[5] In the same prophet,

Edom will become a desolation. Behold, like a lion it will come up from the arrogance of the Jordan against the habitation of Ethan. Jeremiah 49:17, 19.

'The arrogance of the Jordan' stands for the pride of the external man against the goods and truths of the internal. In Zechariah,

Howl, O fir tree, for the cedar is fallen, for the magnificent ones have been laid waste! Howl, O oaks of Bashan, for the impenetrable forest has come down. The sound of the howling of shepherds [is heard], for their magnificence has been laid waste; the sound of the roaring of young lions, that the pride of the Jordan has been laid waste. Zechariah 11:2-3.

The fact that the Jordan was a boundary of the land of Canaan is clear from Numbers 34:12, and the eastern boundary of the land of Judah, in Joshua 15:5.

Poznámky pod čarou:

1. i.e. the Great or Mediterranean Sea

2. literally, upon me

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