Bible

 

Deuteronomy 17

Studie

   

1 Thou shalt not sacrifice to the Lord thy God a sheep, or an ox, wherein there is blemish, or any fault: for that is an abomination to the Lord thy God.

2 When there shall be found among you within any of thy gates, which the Lord thy God shall give thee, man or woman that do evil in the sight of the Lord thy God, and transgress his covenant,

3 So as to go and serve strange gods, and adore them, the sun and the moon. and all the host of heaven, which I have not commanded:

4 And this is told thee, and hearing it thou hast inquired diligently, and found it to be true, and that the abomination is committed in Israel:

5 Thou shalt bring forth the man or the woman, who have committed that most wicked thing, to the gates of thy city, and they shall be stoned.

6 By the mouth of two or three witnesses shall he die that is to be slain. Let no man be put to death, when only one beareth witness against him.

7 The hands of the witnesses shall be first upon him to kill him, and afterwards the hands of the rest of the people: that thou mayst take away the evil out of the midst of thee.

8 If thou perceive that there be among you a hard and doubtful matter in judgment between blood and blood, cause and cause, leprosy and leprosy: and thou see that the words of the judges within thy gates do vary: arise, and go up to the place, which the Lord thy God shall choose.

9 And thou shalt come to the priests of the Levitical race, and to the judge, that shall be at that time: and thou shalt ask of them, and they shall shew thee the truth of the judgment.

10 And thou shalt do whatsoever they shall say, that preside in the place, which the Lord shall choose, and what they shall teach thee,

11 According to his law; and thou shalt follow their sentence: neither shalt thou decline to the right hand nor to the left hand.

12 But he that will be proud, and refuse to obey the commandment of the priest, who ministereth at that time to the Lord thy God, and the decree of the judge, that man shall die, and thou shalt take away the evil from Israel:

13 And all the people hearing it shall fear, that no one afterwards swell with pride.

14 When thou art come into the land, which the Lord thy God will give thee, and possessest it, and shalt say: I will set a king over me, as all nations have that are round about:

15 Thou shalt set him whom the Lord thy God shall choose out of the number of thy brethren. Thou mayst not make a man of another nation king, that is not thy brother.

16 And when he is made king, he shall not multiply horses to himself, nor lead back the people into Egypt, being lifted up with the number of his horsemen, especially since the Lord hath commanded you to return no more the same way.

17 He shall not have many wives, that may allure his mind, nor immense sums of silver and gold.

18 But after he is raised to the throne of his kingdom, he shall copy out to himself the Deuteronomy of this law in a volume, taking the copy of the priests of the Levitical tribe,

19 And he shall have it with him, and shall read it all the days of his life, that he may learn to fear the Lord his God, and keep his words and ceremonies, that are commanded in the law;

20 And that his heart be not lifted up with pride over his brethren, nor decline to the right or to the left, that he and his sons may reign a long time over Israel.

   

Ze Swedenborgových děl

 

Arcana Coelestia # 10135

Prostudujte si tuto pasáž

  
/ 10837  
  

10135. 'And you shall offer the other lamb between the evenings' means a similar removal of evils in a state of light and love in the external man. This is clear from the meaning of 'offering a lamb', or sacrificing it, as being removed from evils by means of the good of innocence from the Lord, as immediately above in 10134; and from the meaning of 'between the evenings' as in a state of light and love in the external man. In the Word 'evening' means a state involving interior things when the truths of faith are set in obscurity, and forms of the good of love are in some coldness; for angels experience different states of love and light, just as in the world different times of day - morning, midday, evening, night or twilight prior to morning, and morning again - give way to one another. When the angels experience a state of love, to them it is morning, and the Lord appears before them as the rising Sun. When they experience a state of light, to them it is midday. When however they experience a state of light set in obscurity, to them it is evening; and when after this they experience a state of love set in obscurity or some coldness, for them it is night, or rather the twilight before morning.

[2] Such states experienced by the angels follow unceasingly one after another, and serve unceasingly to make them more perfect. But those changes are not due to the Sun there, to its rising and setting, but to the state of the interiors within the angels themselves; for as with people in the world they have a desire at one time to turn towards their internal interests, at another towards their external ones. When they turn towards internal interests they experience a state of love and consequently of light in clearness, and when they turn towards external interests they experience a state of love and consequently of light set in obscurity; for what is external is such, compared with what is internal. This is the origin of the changes of state experienced by angels. The reason why they have such states and such changes is that the Sun of heaven, which in that world is the Lord, is the Divine Love itself. Therefore the heat radiating from it is the good of love, and the light from it is the truth of faith. For everything radiating from that Sun has life, unlike the things radiating from the sun in the world, which are dead.

[3] From this it becomes clear what heavenly heat is and what heavenly light is, also why it is that 'heat', 'flame', and 'fire' in the Word mean the good of love, 'light' and its 'brightness' the truth of faith, and 'the sun' the Lord Himself in respect of Divine Love.

The Lord in heaven is the Sun, see 3636, 3643, 4321(end), 5097, 7078, 7083, 7171, 7173, 8812.

The heat from it is the good of love, 3338, 3339, 3636, 3693, 4018, 5215, 6032, 6314.

The light from that Sun is Divine Truth, the source of faith, intelligence, and wisdom, see the places referred to in 9548, 9684.

From all this it now becomes clear what 'morning' and what 'evening' mean.

[4] But it should be recognized that in the present verse 'the morning' implies midday as well, and evening early morning twilight as well; for when the words 'morning and evening' are used in the Word an entire day is meant, so that 'morning' includes midday, and 'evening' night or twilight. This explains why 'the morning' in the present verse means a state of love and also of light in clearness, that is, in the internal man, and 'the evening' a state of light, as well as of love in obscurity, that is, in the external man.

[5] The fact that 'between the evenings' is not used to mean the period of time between the evening of one day and the evening of the next day, but the time between evening and morning, thus all of the night or twilight, is evident from the consideration that the continual burnt offering of a lamb was presented not only in the evening but also in the morning. From this it becomes clear that something similar is meant elsewhere by 'between the evenings', for example, where it says that the Passover should be kept between the evenings, Exodus 12:6; Numbers 9:5, 11, which is explained in yet another place by the following words,

You shall sacrifice the Passover in the evening when the sun goes down, at the fixed time of the departure from Egypt. After that you shall cook and eat it in the place which Jehovah your God will have chosen; and in the morning you shall turn 1 and go into your tents. Deuteronomy 16:6-7.

[6] The fact that 'evening' in general means a state of light shining in obscurity is clear in Jeremiah,

Arise, and let us go up into the south. Woe to us, for the day goes away, for the shadows of evening are set at an angle! Arise, and let us go up at night, and let us destroy the palaces. Jeremiah 6:4-5.

Here 'evening' and 'night' mean the last times of the Church, when all matters of faith and love have been destroyed. In Zechariah,

There will be one day, which is known to Jehovah, when around evening time there will be light. On that day living waters will go out from Jerusalem. And Jehovah will be King over all the earth. Zechariah 14:7-9.

This refers to the Lord's Coming. The end of the Church is meant by 'evening time'; 'light' is the Lord's Divine Truth. A similar example occurs in Daniel,

The holy one said to me, Up to the evening, [when it is becoming] the morning, two thousand three hundred times. Daniel 8:13-14.

  
/ 10837  
  

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