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Exodus 34

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1 And Jehovah said to Moses, Hew for thyself two tables of stone like the first; and I will write upon the tables the words that were upon the first tables, which thou hast broken.

2 And be ready for the morning, and go up in the morning to mount Sinai, and stand there before me on the top of the mountain.

3 And let no man go up with thee, neither shall any man be seen on all the mountain; neither shall sheep and oxen feed in front of that mountain.

4 And he hewed two tables of stone like the first; and Moses rose up early in the morning and went up to mount Sinai, as Jehovah had commanded him, and took in his hand the two tables of stone.

5 And Jehovah came down in the cloud, and stood beside him there, and proclaimed the name of Jehovah.

6 And Jehovah passed by before his face, and proclaimed, Jehovah, Jehovah ùGod merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abundant in goodness and truth,

7 keeping mercy unto thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but by no means clearing [the guilty]; visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, and upon the children's children, upon the third and upon the fourth [generation].

8 And Moses made haste, and bowed his head to the earth and worshipped,

9 and said, If indeed I have found grace in thine eyes, Lord, let the Lord, I pray thee, go in our midst; for it is a stiff-necked people; and pardon our iniquity and our sin, and take us for an inheritance!

10 And he said, Behold, I make a covenant: before all thy people I will do marvels that have not been done in all the earth, nor in any nation; and all the people in the midst of which thou [art] shall see the work of Jehovah; for a terrible thing it shall be that I will do with thee.

11 Observe what I command thee this day: behold, I will drive out before thee the Amorite, and the Canaanite, and the Hittite, and the Perizzite, and the Hivite, and the Jebusite.

12 Take heed to thyself, that thou make no covenant with the inhabitants of the land to which thou shalt come, lest it be a snare in the midst of thee;

13 but ye shall demolish their altars, shatter their statues, and hew down their Asherahs.

14 For thou shalt worship no other ùGod; for Jehovah -- Jealous is his name -- is a jealous ùGod;

15 lest thou make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land, and then, when they go a whoring after their gods, and sacrifice unto their gods, thou be invited, and eat of their sacrifice,

16 and thou take of their daughters unto thy sons, and their daughters go a whoring after their gods, and make thy sons go a whoring after their gods.

17 -- Thou shalt make thyself no molten gods.

18 -- The feast of the unleavened bread shalt thou keep: seven days shalt thou eat unleavened bread, as I have commanded thee, at the appointed time of the month Abib; for in the month Abib thou camest out from Egypt.

19 -- All that openeth the womb [is] mine; and all the cattle that is born a male, the firstling of ox and sheep.

20 But the firstling of an ass thou shalt ransom with a lamb; and if thou ransom [it] not, then shalt thou break its neck. All the first-born of thy sons thou shalt ransom; and none shall appear before me empty.

21 -- Six days shalt thou work, but on the seventh day thou shalt rest; in ploughing time and in harvest thou shalt rest.

22 -- And thou shalt observe the feast of weeks, of the first-fruits of wheat-harvest, and the feast of ingathering at the turn of the year.

23 Thrice in the year shall all thy males appear before the Lord Jehovah, the God of Israel.

24 For I will dispossess the nations before thee, and enlarge thy border, and no man shall desire thy land, when thou goest up to appear before the face of Jehovah thy God thrice in the year.

25 -- Thou shalt not offer the blood of my sacrifice with leaven; neither shall the sacrifice of the feast of the passover be left over night until the morning.

26 -- The first of the first-fruits of thy land shalt thou bring into the house of Jehovah thy God. Thou shalt not boil a kid in its mother's milk.

27 And Jehovah said to Moses, Write thee these words; for after the tenor of these words have I made a covenant with thee and with Israel.

28 -- And he was there with Jehovah forty days and forty nights; he ate no bread, and drank no water. -- And he wrote on the tables the words of the covenant, the ten words.

29 And it came to pass, when Moses came down from mount Sinai -- and the two tables of testimony were in Moses' hand, when he came down from the mountain -- that Moses knew not that the skin of his face shone through his talking with him.

30 And Aaron and all the children of Israel saw Moses, and behold, the skin of his face shone; and they were afraid to come near him.

31 And Moses called to them; and they turned to him, -- Aaron and all the principal men of the assembly; and Moses talked with them.

32 And afterwards, all the children of Israel came near; and he gave them in commandment all that Jehovah had spoken with him on mount Sinai.

33 And Moses ended speaking with them; and he had put on his face a veil.

34 And when Moses went in before Jehovah to speak with him, he took the veil off, until he came out; and he came out, and spoke to the children of Israel what he was commanded.

35 And the children of Israel saw the face of Moses, that the skin of Moses' face shone; and Moses put the veil on his face again, until he went in to speak with him.

   

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Arcana Coelestia # 10642

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10642. 'Therefore you shall overthrow their altars' means that the evil involved in that type of religion and in the worship springing from it is to be rejected. This is clear from the meaning of 'altar' as the chief representative of the Lord and of worship of Him which springs from good, dealt with in 921, 2777, 2811, 4541, 8935, 8940, 9388, 9389, 9714, 9964, 10242, 10245, and therefore in the contrary sense as that which is representative of idolatrous worship, thus worship springing from evil, dealt with below; and from the meaning of 'overthrowing' as rejecting. For of altars it is said that they are to be overthrown, but of evils involved in worship, meant by the altars of the nations, it is said that they are to be rejected.

[2] In this verse altars, pillars, and groves are mentioned, and in general they mean everything connected with idolatrous worship, worship that springs from evil being meant by 'altars', worship that springs from the falsity of evil by 'pillars', and religious teachings that go with them by 'groves'. The reason why they were to be completely banished was that those representative objects were not used to worship the Lord but to worship gods, such as the baals and many others, who had once been ordinary human beings. This worship was devilish and hellish, because worshipping human beings instead of God Himself, who is the Lord, is devilish; for a person is linked to whomever he worships.

[3] The situation is this: If a person is worshipped as a god, anyone who comes from hell is linked to him. This is because belief and love create a link; that is, a belief in what is true and a love of what is good link a person to the Lord, but a belief in what is false and a love of what is evil link a person to hell. For everyone has spirits from hell and angels from heaven present with him; without their presence the person could not live. If someone who was once a human being in the world is worshipped by a person the spirits from hell with that person think that they are the ones who are being worshipped (for everyone in hell wishes to be a god), and these spirits transmit that worship to the hellish community they belong to. To the extent therefore that these are worshipped the angels from heaven depart. As a consequence the person is drawn away into hellish desires, till at length, so far as all the life within him is concerned, he becomes like those spirits; and after death he also comes to be one of them. But when the Lord, who is the God of heaven and earth, is worshipped by a person the angels from heaven who are present with that person arrogate none of his worship to themselves, because they ascribe all the truth that people believe and all the good that they love to the Lord, and none to themselves. Through them consequently the way right through to the Lord Himself is laid open, and He then joins them to Himself in faith and love. From all this it may be recognized how extremely important it is to worship the Lord Himself, who has all power in heaven and on earth, as He Himself declares in Matthew 28:18.

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