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Numbers 23

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1 And Balaam said to Balak, Build me here seven altars, and prepare me here seven bullocks and seven rams.

2 And Balak did as Balaam had said; and Balak and Balaam offered up a bullock and a ram on [each] altar.

3 And Balaam said to Balak, Stand by thy burnt-offering, and I will go; perhaps Jehovah will come to meet me; and whatever he shews me I will tell thee. And he went to a hill.

4 And God met Balaam; and [Balaam] said to him, I have disposed seven altars, and have offered up a bullock and a ram upon [each] altar.

5 And Jehovah put a word in Balaam's mouth, and said, Return to Balak, and thus shalt thou speak.

6 And he returned to him, and behold, he was standing by his burnt-offering, he, and all the princes of Moab.

7 And he took up his parable, and said, Balak the king of Moab hath brought me from Aram, from the mountains of the east: Come, curse me Jacob, and come, denounce Israel!

8 How shall I curse whom ùGod hath not cursed? or how shall I denounce whom Jehovah doth not denounce?

9 For from the top of the rocks I see him, and from the hills I behold him: Lo, [it is] a people that shall dwell alone and shall not be reckoned among the nations.

10 Who can count the dust of Jacob, and the number of the fourth part of Israel? Let my soul die the death of the righteous, and let my end be like his!

11 And Balak said to Balaam, What hast thou done to me? I took thee to curse mine enemies, and behold, thou hast blessed them altogether.

12 And he answered and said, Must I not take heed to speak that which Jehovah puts in my mouth?

13 And Balak said to him, Come, I pray thee, with me to another place, from whence thou wilt see them; thou shalt see only the extremity of them and shalt not see them all, and curse me them from thence.

14 And he took him to the watchmen's field, to the top of Pisgah, and built seven altars, and offered up a bullock and a ram on [each] altar.

15 And [Balaam] said to Balak, Stand here by thy burnt-offering, and I will go to meet yonder.

16 And Jehovah met Balaam, and put a word in his mouth, and said, Return to Balak, and thus shalt thou speak.

17 And he came to him, and behold, he was standing by his burnt-offering, and the princes of Moab with him; and Balak said to him, What has Jehovah spoken?

18 Then he took up his parable and said, Rise up, Balak, and hear! hearken unto me, son of Zippor!

19 ùGod is not a man, that he should lie; neither a son of man, that he should repent. Shall he say and not do? and shall he speak and not make it good?

20 Behold, I have received [mission] to bless; and he hath blessed, and I cannot reverse it.

21 He hath not beheld iniquity in Jacob, neither hath he seen wrong in Israel; Jehovah his God is with him, and the shout of a king is in his midst.

22 ùGod brought him out of Egypt; he hath as it were the strength of a buffalo.

23 For there is no enchantment against Jacob, neither is there any divination against Israel. At this time it shall be said of Jacob and of Israel, What hath ùGod wrought!

24 Lo, the people will rise up as a lioness, and lift himself up as a lion. He shall not lie down until he have eaten the prey and drunk the blood of the slain.

25 And Balak said to Balaam, Neither curse them at all, nor bless them at all.

26 And Balaam answered and said to Balak, Did I not tell thee, saying, All that Jehovah shall speak, that will I do?

27 And Balak said to Balaam, Come, I pray thee, I will bring thee to another place; perhaps it will be right in the sight of God that thou curse me them from thence.

28 And Balak brought Balaam to the top of Peor, which looks over the surface of the waste.

29 And Balaam said to Balak, Build me here seven altars, and prepare me here seven bullocks and seven rams.

30 And Balak did as Balaam had said, and offered up a bullock and a ram on each altar.

   

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Arcana Coelestia # 4290

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4290. In the internal historical sense 'he said, I will not let you go unless you bless me' means that they insisted on being representative, for being insistent is meant by 'I will not let you' and the representative of the Church by 'being blessed'. This particular matter - the insistence of Jacob's descendants that they should be representative of the Church, though they were no more the elect than any other nation - is not very clear, it is true, from the historical narratives of the Word contained in the sense of the letter. It is not clear because those narratives hold the arcana of heaven within them, which accordingly follow one another in a connected sequence, and also because the actual names there are used to mean spiritual realities, many of which names indeed are used in the highest sense to mean the Lord. Examples of these are Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, who mean in the highest sense the Lord, as has been shown many times in what has gone before; see also 1965, 1989, 2011, 3245, 3305 (end), 3439.

[2] The fact that Jacob's descendants were not the elect, yet they insisted that the Church should have its existence among themselves, may be seen from the internal historical sense in many places in the Word, openly so in the following statements in Moses,

Jehovah said to Moses, Go up from here, you and the people which you made to go up out of the land of Egypt, into the land which I swore to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, saying, To your seed I will give it. I will not go up in your midst, for you are a stiff-necked people, lest I consume you on the way. When the people heard this bad news, 1 they mourned and took off every one his ornament from upon him. And Moses took a tent and pitched it for himself outside the camp, far away from the camp. Moses said to Jehovah, See, You say to me, Make this people go up, when You have not made known to me whom You will send with me. Now therefore, if, I pray, I have found favour in Your eyes, make known to me, I pray, Your ways, so that I may know of You, that I have found favour in Your eyes. See also that this nation is Your people. He said therefore, My presence will go [with you], until I give you rest. Exodus 33:1, 3-4, 7, 12-14.

In this chapter of Exodus it is said that Moses made the people go up out of Egypt and then that they took off their ornaments and mourned, and that Moses pitched the tent outside the camp and that Jehovah gave His assent. This shows plainly that they themselves were insistent.

[3] In the same author,

Jehovah said to Moses, How long will this people provoke Me? And how long will they not believe, for all the signs which I have performed in their midst? I will strike them down with pestilence and annihilate them, and I will make you into a nation greater and mightier than they are. But Moses entreated Jehovah, who being appeased said, I will be gracious according to your word. But yet, I am the living One, and all the earth will be filled with the glory of Jehovah; for as for all the men who have seen My glory and My signs which I performed in Egypt and in the desert, and despite this have tempted Me these ten times and have not obeyed My voice, they will not see the land which I swore to their fathers; all who provoke Me will not see it. In this desert will your bodies fall, but I will bring in your children. Numbers 14[11-13, 20-23, 29, 31].

From these verses also it is evident that Jehovah was willing to annihilate them and therefore not to establish the Church among them, but that they insisted it should be established among them, and therefore it was done. And there were many other occasions besides this when Jehovah would have wiped out that repeatedly rebellious nation but repeatedly He allowed Himself to be appeased by their entreaties.

[4] The same is also implied by the fact that Balaam was not allowed to curse that people, in 22 Chapters, 24 of Numbers; in addition to other places where it is said that Jehovah repented of having brought that people in; also that Jehovah was appeased, as well as that He repeatedly made a new covenant with them. These are the kinds of things that are meant in the internal historical sense by the words 'I will not let you go unless you bless me'. Something similar is also meant by Jacob's taking the birthright from Esau as well as taking the blessing by deceit from him, in Chapters 25, 27 of Genesis.

Poznámky pod čarou:

1. literally, evil word

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