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Deuteronomy 30

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1 And it shall come to pass, when all these things are come upon thee, the blessing and the curse, which I have set before thee, and thou shalt take them to heart among all the nations whither Jehovah thy God hath driven thee,

2 and shalt return to Jehovah thy God, and shalt hearken to his voice according to all that I command thee this day, thou and thy sons, with all thy heart and with all thy soul;

3 that then Jehovah thy God will turn thy captivity, and have compassion upon thee, and will gather thee again from all the peoples whither Jehovah thy God hath scattered thee.

4 Though there were of you driven out unto the end of the heavens, from thence will Jehovah thy God gather thee, and from thence will he fetch thee;

5 and Jehovah thy God will bring thee into the land that thy fathers possessed, and thou shalt possess it; and he will do thee good, and multiply thee above thy fathers.

6 And Jehovah thy God will circumcise thy heart, and the heart of thy seed, to love Jehovah thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul, that thou mayest live.

7 And Jehovah thy God will put all these curses on thine enemies, and on them that hate thee, who have persecuted thee.

8 But thou shalt return and hearken to the voice of Jehovah, and do all his commandments which I command thee this day.

9 And Jehovah thy God will make thee abound in every work of thy hand, in the fruit of thy body, and in the fruit of thy cattle, and in the fruit of thy ground, for good; for Jehovah will again rejoice over thee for good, as he rejoiced over thy fathers;

10 if thou shalt hearken unto the voice of Jehovah thy God, to keep his commandments and his statutes which are written in this book of the law; if thou turn to Jehovah thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul.

11 For this commandment which I command thee this day is not too wonderful for thee, neither is it far off.

12 It is not in the heavens, that thou shouldest say, Who shall go up for us to the heavens, and bring it to us, that we should hear it and do it?

13 And it is not beyond the sea, that thou shouldest say, Who shall go over the sea for us, and bring it to us, that we should hear it and do it?

14 For the word is very near to thee, in thy mouth and in thy heart, that thou mayest do it.

15 See, I have set before thee this day life and good, and death and evil,

16 in that I command thee this day to love Jehovah thy God, to walk in his ways, and to keep his commandments and his statutes and his ordinances, that thou mayest live and multiply, and that Jehovah thy God may bless thee in the land whither thou goest to possess it.

17 But if thy heart turn away, so that thou wilt not hear, but shalt be drawn away, and thou shalt bow down to other gods and serve them;

18 I denounce unto you this day that ye shall surely perish; ye shall not prolong your days upon the land whereunto thou passest over the Jordan to possess it.

19 I call heaven and earth to witness this day against you: life and death have I set before you, blessing and cursing: choose then life, that thou mayest live, thou and thy seed,

20 in loving Jehovah thy God, in hearkening to his voice, and in cleaving to him -- for this is thy life and the length of thy days -- that thou mayest dwell in the land which Jehovah swore unto thy fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give them.

   

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Abraham

  
Représentation d'Abraham, by Joseph Villiet

Abraham (or Abram, as he was named in the beginning of his story) was the ancestor of all the Children of Israel, through his son Isaac, and of the Arabs, through his son Ishmael.

Abraham represents the Divine good or love. His story foreshadows the life of Jesus, and our spiritual lives, too.

His life can be usefully seen as being divided into three periods. The first period includes the unknown early years from his birth in Ur, and his later move to Haran with his father Terah. The second section starts with Abram's being called by Jehovah to go to Canaan. It includes the adventures he had there, and continues until the events of the 17th chapter of Genesis where he is said to be 99 years old, rich, and powerful - but without a son by his wife Sarai. Once again the Lord appears to him, promises that his progeny will become a great nation, institutes the rite of circumcision, and changes his name to Abraham, adding the "ah" sound from Jehovah. The third and last period of his life sees the birth of Isaac, the death of Sarah (whose name was also changed), and the finding of a wife for Isaac from among Abraham's relatives back in Mesopotamia. Abraham is said to be 175 years old when he dies, as recorded in the 25th chapter of Genesis.

What we are here interested in is the deep representation of Abraham because he prophesies or foreshadows the inmost part of Jesus' life after He is born to Mary centuries after the man Abraham lived on the earth. Abraham represents the Divine good or love. The internal sense of the Word tells us that God himself provided the life into an ovum within Mary, so she could provide a natural body and a natural heredity from the Jewish religion, while the soul of Jesus was kept as a direct possessor of divine life. During Jesus' early life, probably up to adolescence, Jesus lived out those representative actions of Abraham in the innermost parts of his mind and spirit. Abraham as he pastured his sheep and ran his large household had no idea at all that this was true, and early in Jesus' life He didn't realize it either. There must have been perceptions as Jesus grew up, witness his visit to the temple when He was 12, but not a complete understanding until He was fully grown. And further, it isn't only Abraham. When Abraham dies, the representation attaches to Isaac, who represents the rational level of the mind, and then to both Jacob and Esau who represent the natural mind as to truth and good in the mind respectively. And then the trials of the twelve tribes, the kings, and all the sayings of the prophets become that same representation. So Jesus could say to the two disciples that He met on the road to Emmaus, "O fools and slow of heart... and beginning at Moses and all the Prophets He expounded to them in all the scriptures all the things concerning Himself." (The following references are chronologic as Abraham gets older, and are in biblical sequence.) And furthermore, the progress of mental and spiritual life in each one of us is a dim and finite image of that represented by Abraham's life if, that is, we are trying to follow the Lord's laws and precepts to love one another. We too have within us a journey to the land of Canaan, a hardworking sojourn in Egypt, a struggle in the wilderness, and a Saul, a David, and an Ahab. We have our home-grown Amalekites and Philistines. The whole of the Old Testament is a picture of how our spiritual life works.

In Genesis 20:7, Abraham signifies celestial truth, or doctrine from a celestial origin. (Arcana Coelestia 2533)

In Genesis 12:4, As ABRAHAM he represents the Lord as to His Human and Divine Essence; as ABRAM he represents the Lord as to His human essence only. (Arcana Coelestia 1426)

In Genesis 17:5, The name was changed by adding the letter H, so that the Divine Human could he represented, for H is the only letter which involves the Divine: it means I AM, or BEING. (Arcana Coelestia 1416[2])

(Odkazy: Genesis 17, 25)