7764. 出埃及记 11:1-3. 耶和华对摩西说, 我再使一样灾殃临到法老和埃及, 然后他必把你们从这里打发走. 他打发一切去的时候, 一定把你们从这里赶出去. 现在你要在百姓的耳中说话, 叫他们男人向他的同伴, 女人向她的同伴要金器银器. 耶和华叫百姓在埃及人眼里蒙恩, 并且摩西这个人在埃及地, 在法老的臣仆眼中和百姓眼中, 极其伟大.

“耶和华对摩西说” 表指示. “我再使一样灾殃临到法老和埃及” 表荒凉的最后阶段, 也就是诅咒. “然后他必把你们从这里打发走” 表那时要离开他们. “他打发一切去的时候, 一定把你们从这里赶出去” 表他们将彻底离开他们, 憎恶他们, 并避开他们的出现. “现在你要在百姓的耳中说话” 表指示和顺服. “叫他们男人向他的同伴, 女人向她的同伴要金器银器” 表真理和良善的记忆知识必从属于教会的恶人那里被夺走, 并赐给属于教会的善人. “耶和华叫百姓在埃及人眼里蒙恩” 表那些陷入邪恶的人由于灾殃而对那些属于属灵教会之人的惧怕. “并且摩西这个人在埃及地极其伟大” 表现在对神之真理的尊重. “在法老的臣仆眼中和百姓眼中” 表在那些在那里处于从属地位的人中间.

At the inmost level, the story of Moses -- like all of the Bible -- is about the Lord and his spiritual development during his human life as Jesus. Moses's role represents establishing forms of worship and to make the people obedient. As such, his primary representation is "the Law of God," the rules God gave the people of Israel to follow in order to represent spiritual things. This can be interpreted narrowly as the Ten Commandments, more broadly as the books of Moses, or most broadly as the entire Bible. Fittingly, his spiritual meaning is complex and important, and evolves throughout the course of his life. To understand it, it helps to understand the meaning of the events in which he was involved. At a more basic level, Moses's story deals with the establishment of the third church to serve as a container of knowledge of the Lord. The first such church -- the Most Ancient Church, represented by Adam and centered on love of the Lord -- had fallen prey to human pride and was destroyed. The second -- the Ancient Church, represented by Noah and the generations that followed him -- was centered on love of the neighbor, wisdom from the Lord and knowledge of the correspondences between natural and spiritual things. It fell prey to the pride of intelligence, however -- represented by the Tower of Babel -- and at the time of Moses was in scattered pockets that were sliding into idolatry. On an external level, of course, Moses led the people of Israel out of Egypt through 40 years in the wilderness to the border of the homeland God had promised them. Along the way, he established and codified their religious system, and oversaw the creation of its most holy objects. Those rules and the forms of worship they created were given as containers for deeper ideas about the Lord, deeper truth, and at some points -- especially when he was first leading his people away from Egypt, a time before the rules had been written down -- Moses takes on the deeper representation of Divine Truth itself, truth from the Lord. At other times -- especially after Mount Sinai -- he has a less exalted meaning, representing the people of Israel themselves due to his position as their leader. Through Moses the Lord established a third church, one more external than its predecessors but one that could preserve knowledge of the Lord and could, through worship that represented spiritual things, make it possible for the Bible to be written and passed to future generations.