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Ezekiel 41

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1 And he brought me to the temple; and he measured the posts, six cubits broad on the one side, and six cubits broad on the other side, the breadth of the tent.

2 And the breadth of the entry was ten cubits, and the sides of the entry were five cubits on this side, and five cubits on that side; and he measured its length, forty cubits, and the breadth, twenty cubits.

3 And he went inwards, and measured the post of the entry, two cubits; and the entry, six cubits; and the breadth of the entry, seven cubits.

4 And he measured its length, twenty cubits; and the breadth, twenty cubits, before the temple: and he said unto me, This is the most holy [place].

5 And he measured the wall of the house, six cubits; and the breadth of the side-chambers, four cubits, round about the house on every side.

6 And the side-chambers were three, chamber over chamber, and thirty in order; and they entered into the wall which the house had for the side-chambers round about, that they might have hold; but they had not hold in the wall of the house.

7 And for the side-chambers there was an enlarging, and it went round about [the house] increasing upward; for the surrounding of the house increased upward round about the house; therefore the house had width upward, and so ascended [from] the lower [story] to the upper, by the middle one.

8 And I saw that the house had an elevation round about: the foundations of the side-chambers, a full reed, six cubits to the joint.

9 The thickness of the wall, which was for the side-chambers without, was five cubits, as also what was left free along the building of the side-chambers that pertained to the house.

10 And between the cells [and the house] was a width of twenty cubits round about the house on every side.

11 And the entry of the side-chambers was toward what was left free, one entry toward the north, and one entry toward the south; and the width of the space left free was five cubits round about.

12 And the building that was before the separate place at the end toward the west was seventy cubits broad; and the wall of the building was five cubits thick round about; and its length ninety cubits.

13 And he measured the house: the length a hundred cubits; and the separate place, and the building, and its walls, the length a hundred cubits;

14 and the breadth of the front of the house, and of the separate places toward the east, a hundred cubits.

15 And he measured the length of the building before the separate place, which was at the back of it, with its galleries on the one side and on the other side, a hundred cubits; and the inner temple, and the porches of the court.

16 The thresholds, and the closed windows, and the galleries round about the three of them (opposite the thresholds it was wainscoted with wood round about, and from the ground up to the windows, and the windows were covered),

17 [and] above, over the entry, even unto the inner house, and without, and by all the wall round about, within and without, [all was] by measure.

18 And it was made with cherubim and palm-trees, and a palm-tree was between cherub and cherub; and the cherub had two faces:

19 the face of a man was toward the palm-tree on the one side, and the face of a young lion toward the palm-tree on the other side: [so] was it made upon all the house round about.

20 From the ground unto above the entry were the cherubim and the palm-trees made, and [on] the wall of the temple.

21 As for the temple, the door-posts were squared; and the front of the sanctuary had the same appearance.

22 The altar was of wood, three cubits high, and its length two cubits; and its corners, and its length, and its walls were of wood. And he said unto me, This is the table which is before Jehovah.

23 And the temple and the sanctuary had two doors.

24 And the doors had two leaves, two turning-leaves: two for the one door, and two leaves for the other.

25 And there were made on them, on the doors of the temple, cherubim and palm-trees, as there were made upon the walls; and there was a wooden portal in front of the porch without,

26 and closed windows and palm-trees on the one side and on the other side, on the sides of the porch and the side chambers of the house and the portals.

   

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Arcana Coelestia # 7847

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7847. 'And put it onto the two doorposts and onto the lintel' means the truths and forms of good of the natural. This is clear from the meaning of 'the doorposts' as the truths of the natural; and from the meaning of 'the lintel' as the forms of good belonging to it. The reason why the doorposts and lintel have this meaning is that 'the house' means the actual person or his mind, and parts forming the door mean the things that serve to lead into it. These, it may be evident, are the truths and forms of good of the natural; for the natural man receives instruction first, before the rational man, and the ideas he learns during that time are natural ones, into which spiritual ideas, which are more internal, are gradually instilled. From this one may see in what way the truths and forms of good of the natural serve to lead in. Furthermore lintel and doorposts are similar in meaning to a person's frontlets and hands; for it is in the nature of angelic ideas to associate natural objects with human characteristics. The reason for this is that the spiritual world or heaven is in form like a person, and therefore all things in that world - that is, all spiritual realities, which are truths and forms of good - have connection with that form, as has been shown where correspondences are the subject, at the ends of quite a number of chapters. And since in angelic ideas natural objects become spiritual realities a house does so too. To them it is a person's mind; the bedrooms and other rooms are the inner parts of the mind, and the windows, doors, doorposts, and lintels are the outer parts leading in. Since angelic ideas are like this they are also filled with life; and that being so, things which in the natural world are lifeless objects become objects filled with life when they pass into the spiritual world. For everything spiritual is filled with life since it comes from the Lord.

[2] The fact that 'doorposts and lintel' is similar in meaning to a person's 'frontlets and hands' may be seen from the following words in Moses,

You shall love Jehovah your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength. You are to bind them as a sign onto your hand, and let them be as frontlets between your eyes. And you are to write them onto the doorposts of your house, and on your gates. Deuteronomy 6:5, 8-9; 11:13, 18, 20.

Since they hold a similar meaning to each other both observances have been stated here.

[3] As regards the meaning of 'lintel and doorposts' in the spiritual sense as the forms of good and the truths of the natural which lead into spiritual things, this is clear from the description in Ezekiel of the new temple, which means the spiritual Church. There reference is made many times to doorposts and lintels, objects which were also measured. This would never have been done unless those details had also meant something descriptive of the Church or of heaven, that is, something spiritual, such as the following details in that prophet,

The priest shall take some of the blood of the sin offering, and put it onto the doorpost of the house, and onto the four corners of the ledge of the altar, and onto the post of the gate of the inner court, on the first day of the month. Ezekiel 45:19.

[4] In the same prophet,

The prince shall enter by the way of the portico outside, and stand by the gate post; and the priests shall make his burnt offering. At that time he shall worship on the threshold of the gate. Ezekiel 46:2.

Anyone may recognize that 'the temple' here is not used to mean the temple but the Lord's Church, for the kinds of things described here in a number of chapters have never come about, and never will. In the highest sense 'the temple' is used to mean the Lord's Divine Human. He Himself teaches this meaning in John 2:19, 21-22; and in the representative sense 'the temple is therefore used to mean His Church. For statements that the angel measured the lintels of this new temple, see Ezekiel 40:9-10, 14, 16, 24; 41:21, 25. This measuring of them would have had no importance unless 'the lintels', and also the numbers involved, had meant some aspect of the Church. Because 'the doorposts and lintel' meant the truths and forms of good in the natural, which serve to lead in, the ones in this new temple were square, Ezekiel 41:21. For the same reason the doorposts in Solomon's temple were made of planks of olive wood, 1 Kings 6:31, 33. 'Olive wood' meant the good of truth or the good which is that of the spiritual Church.

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