Father
Father in the Word means what is most interior, and in those things that are following the Lord's order, it means what is good. In the highest sense Father means the Lord Himself, the creator. In the generation of natural children it is the father who provides the soul or the most interior receptacle of life, and an internal heredity, and the mother who provides all of the substance that the soul uses to form its body, plus an external heredity. In this process the soul comes from the Lord through the father, and not from the father, since all life is from the Lord. The wise person calls the Lord his father and the church his mother because his interior loves come from the Lord, but are given form and actuality through the truths taught by the church. Those things thus brought forth are a person's spiritual "children". In the New Testament, when speaking of Jesus and the Father, what is meant is the outward manifestation with the divine itself as the soul inside. Because Jesus was born from a natural mother, He had a natural body and a natural Jewish heredity. Throughout his life as He was tempted by the hells, He slowly put off all he had from His mother and replaced it with what He had from Himself inside, the Father. In doing this he made himself one with the Father that was His inmost so He could truly say, "I and my Father are one".
Numbers 25
1
Israel stayed in Shittim; and the people began to play the prostitute with the daughters of Moab:
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for they called the people to the sacrifices of their gods; and the people ate, and bowed down to their gods.
3
Israel joined himself to Baal Peor: and the anger of Yahweh was kindled against Israel.
4
Yahweh said to Moses, "Take all the chiefs of the people, and hang them up to Yahweh before the sun, that the fierce anger of Yahweh may turn away from Israel."
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Moses said to the judges of Israel, "Everyone kill his men who have joined themselves to Baal Peor."
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Behold, one of the children of Israel came and brought to his brothers a Midianite woman in the sight of Moses, and in the sight of all the congregation of the children of Israel, while they were weeping at the door of the Tent of Meeting.
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When Phinehas, the son of Eleazar, the son of Aaron the priest, saw it, he rose up from the midst of the congregation, and took a spear in his hand;
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and he went after the man of Israel into the pavilion, and thrust both of them through, the man of Israel, and the woman through her body. So the plague was stayed from the children of Israel.
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Those who died by the plague were twenty-four thousand.
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Yahweh spoke to Moses, saying,
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"Phinehas, the son of Eleazar, the son of Aaron the priest, has turned my wrath away from the children of Israel, in that he was jealous with my jealousy among them, so that I didn't consume the children of Israel in my jealousy.
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Therefore say, 'Behold, I give to him my covenant of peace:
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and it shall be to him, and to his seed after him, the covenant of an everlasting priesthood; because he was jealous for his God, and made atonement for the children of Israel.'"
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Now the name of the man of Israel that was slain, who was slain with the Midianite woman, was Zimri, the son of Salu, a prince of a fathers' house among the Simeonites.
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The name of the Midianite woman who was slain was Cozbi, the daughter of Zur; he was head of the people of a fathers' house in Midian.
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Yahweh spoke to Moses, saying,
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"Harass the Midianites, and strike them;
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for they harassed you with their wiles, with which they have deceived you in the matter of Peor, and in the matter of Cozbi, the daughter of the prince of Midian, their sister, who was slain on the day of the plague in the matter of Peor."
