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Genesis 22

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1 And it came to pass after these things, that God tried Abraham, and said to him, Abraham! and he said, Here am I.

2 And he said, Take now thy son, thine only [son], whom thou lovest, Isaac, and get thee into the land of Moriah, and there offer him up for a burnt-offering on one of the mountains which I will tell thee of.

3 And Abraham rose early in the morning, and saddled his ass, and took two of his young men with him, and Isaac his son; and he clave the wood for the burnt-offering, and rose up and went to the place that God had told him of.

4 On the third day Abraham lifted up his eyes and saw the place from afar.

5 And Abraham said to his young men, Abide ye here with the ass; and I and the lad will go yonder and worship, and come again to you.

6 And Abraham took the wood of the burnt-offering, and laid it on Isaac his son; and he took the fire in his hand, and the knife, and they went both of them together.

7 And Isaac spoke to Abraham his father, and said, My father! And he said, Here am I, my son. And he said, Behold the fire and the wood; but where is the sheep for a burnt-offering?

8 And Abraham said, My son, God will provide himself with the sheep for a burnt-offering. And they went both of them together.

9 And they came to the place of which God had told him. And Abraham built the altar there, and piled the wood; and he bound Isaac his son, and laid him on the altar upon the wood.

10 And Abraham stretched out his hand, and took the knife to slaughter his son.

11 And the Angel of Jehovah called to him from the heavens, and said, Abraham, Abraham! And he said, Here am I.

12 And he said, Stretch not out thy hand against the lad, neither do anything to him; for now I know that thou fearest God, and hast not withheld thy son, thine only [son], from me.

13 And Abraham lifted up his eyes, and looked, and behold, behind was a ram caught in the thicket by its horns; and Abraham went and took the ram, and offered it up for a burnt-offering instead of his son.

14 And Abraham called the name of that place Jehovah-jireh; as it is said at the present day, On the mount of Jehovah will be provided.

15 And the Angel of Jehovah called to Abraham from the heavens a second time,

16 and said, By myself I swear, saith Jehovah, that, because thou hast done this, and hast not withheld thy son, thine only [son],

17 I will richly bless thee, and greatly multiply thy seed, as the stars of heaven, and as the sand that is on the sea-shore; and thy seed shall possess the gate of his enemies;

18 and in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth bless themselves, because thou hast hearkened to my voice.

19 And Abraham returned to his young men, and they rose up and went together to Beer-sheba. And Abraham dwelt at Beer-sheba.

20 And it came to pass after these things, that it was told Abraham, saying, Behold, Milcah, she also has borne sons to thy brother Nahor:

21 Uz his first-born, and Buz his brother, and Kemuel the father of Aram,

22 and Chesed, and Hazo, and Pildash, and Jidlaph, and Bethuel.

23 (And Bethuel begot Rebecca.) These eight Milcah bore to Nahor, Abraham's brother.

24 And his concubine, named Reumah, she also bore Tebah, and Gaham, and Thahash, and Maacah.

   

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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)