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Deuteronomy 28

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1 Now if thou wilt hear the voice of the Lord thy God, to do and keep all his commandments, which I command thee this day, the Lord thy God will make thee higher than all the nations that are on the earth.

2 And all these blessings shall come upon thee and overtake thee: yet so if thou hear his precepts,

3 Blessed shalt thou be in the city, and Blessed in the field.

4 Blessed shall be the fruit of thy womb, and the fruit of thy ground, and the fruit of thy cattle, the droves of thy herds, and the folds of thy sheep.

5 Blessed shall be thy barns and Blessed thy stores.

6 Blessed shalt thou be coming in and going out.

7 The Lord shall cause thy enemies, that rise up against thee, to fall down before thy face: one way shall they come out against thee, and seven ways shall they flee before thee.

8 The Lord will send forth a blessing upon thy storehouses, and upon all the works of thy hands: and will bless thee in the land that thou shalt receive.

9 The Lord will raise thee up to be a holy people to himself, as he swore to thee: if thou keep the commandments of The Lord thy God, and walk in his ways.

10 And all the people of the earth shall see that the name of the Lord is invocated upon thee, and they shall fear thee.

11 The Lord will make thee abound with all goods, with the fruit of thy womb, and the fruit of thy cattle, with the fruit of thy land, which The Lord swore to thy fathers that he would give thee.

12 The Lord will open his excellent treasure, the heaven, that it may give rain in due season: and he will bless all the works of thy hands. And thou shalt lend to many nations, and shalt not borrow of any one.

13 And the Lord shall make thee the head and not the tail: and thou shalt be always above, and not beneath: yet so if thou wilt hear the commandments of the Lord thy God which I command thee this day, and keep and do them,

14 And turn not away from them neither to the right hand, nor to the left, nor follow strange gods, nor worship them.

15 But if thou wilt not hear the voice of the Lord thy God, to keep and to do all his commandments and ceremonies, which I command thee this day, all these curses shall come upon thee, and overtake thee.

16 Cursed shalt thou be in the city, cursed in the field.

17 Cursed shall be thy barn, and cursed thy stores.

18 Cursed shall be the fruit of thy womb, and the fruit of thy ground, the herds of thy oxen, and the flocks of thy sheep.

19 Cursed shalt thou be coming in, and cursed going out.

20 The Lord shall send upon thee famine and hunger, and a rebuke upon all the works which thou shalt do: until he consume and destroy thee quickly, for thy most wicked inventions, by which thou hast forsaken me.

21 May the Lord set the pestilence upon thee, until he consume thee out of the land, which thou shalt go in to possess.

22 May the Lord afflict thee with miser- able want, with the fever and with cold, with burning and with heat, and with corrupted air and with blasting, and pursue thee till thou perish.

23 Be the heaven, that is over thee, of brass: and the ground thou treadest on, of iron.

24 The Lord give thee dust for rain upon thy land, and let ashes come down from heaven upon thee, till thou be consumed.

25 The Lord make thee to fall down before thy enemies, one way mayst thou go out against them, and flee seven ways, and be scattered throughout all the kingdoms of the earth.

26 And be thy carcass meat for all the Fowls of the air, and the beasts of the earth, and be there none to drive them away.

27 The Lord strike thee with the ulcer of Egypt, and the part of thy body, by which the dung is cast out, with the scab and with the itch : so that thou canst not be healed.

28 The Lord strike thee with madness and blindness and fury of mind.

29 And mayst thou grope at midday as the blind is wont to grope in the dark, and not make straight thy ways. And mayst thou at all times suffer wrong, and be oppressed with violence, and mayst thou have no one to deliver thee.

30 Mayst thou take a wife, and another sleep with her. Mayst thou build a house, and not dwell therein. Mayest thou plant a vineyard and not gather the vintage thereof.

31 May thy ox be slain before thee, and thou not eat thereof. May thy ass be taken away in thy sight, and not restored to thee. May thy sheep be given to thy enemies, and may there be none to help thee.

32 May thy sons and thy daughters be given to another people, thy eyes looking on, and languishing at the sight of them all the day, and may there be no strength in thy hand.

33 May a people which thou knowest not, eat the fruits of thy land, and all thy labours: and mayst thou always suffer oppression, and be crushed at all times.

34 And be astonished at the terror of those things which thy eyes shall see:

35 May the Lord strike thee with a very sore ulcer in the knees and in the legs, and be thou incurable from the sole of the foot to the top of the head.

36 The Lord shall bring thee, and thy king, whom thou shalt have appointed over thee, into a nation which thou and thy fathers know not: and there thou shalt serve strange gods, wood and stone.

37 And thou shalt be lost, as a proverb and a byword to all people, among whom the Lord shall bring thee in.

38 Thou shalt cast much seed into the ground, and gather little: because the locusts shall consume all.

39 Thou shalt plant a vineyard, and dig it, and shalt not drink the wine, nor gather any thing thereof: because it shall be wasted with worms.

40 Thou shalt have olive trees in all thy borders, and shalt not be anointed with the oil: for the olives shall fall off and perish.

41 Thou shalt beget sons and daughters, and shalt not enjoy them: because they shall be led into captivity.

42 The blast shall consume all the trees and the fruits of thy ground.

43 The stranger that liveth with thee in the land, shall rise up over thee, and shall be higher: and thou shalt go down, and be lower.

44 He shall lend to thee, and thou shalt not lend to him. He shall be as the head, and thou shalt be the tail.

45 And all these curses shall come upon thee, and shall pursue and overtake thee, till thou perish: because thou heardst not the voice of the Lord thy God, and didst not keep his commandments and ceremonies which he commanded thee.

46 And they shall be as signs and wonders on thee, and on thy seed for ever.

47 Because thou didst not serve the Lord thy God with joy and gladness of heart, for the abundance of all things:

48 Thou shalt serve thy enemy, whom the Lord will send upon thee, in hunger, and thirst, and nakedness, and in want of all things: and he shall put an iron yoke upon thy neck, till he consume thee.

49 The Lord will bring upon thee a nation from afar, and from the uttermost ends of the earth, like an eagle that flyeth swiftly, whose tongue thou canst not understand,

50 A most insolent nation, that will shew no regard to the ancients, nor have pity on the infant,

51 And will devour the fruit of thy cattle, and the fruits of thy land: until thou be destroyed, and will leave thee no wheat, nor wine, nor oil, nor herds of oxen, nor flocks of sheep: until he destroy thee.

52 And consume thee in all thy cities, end thy strong and high walls be brought down, wherein thou trustedst in all thy land. Thou shalt be besieged within thy gates in all thy land which the Lord thy God will give thee:

53 And thou shalt eat the fruit of thy womb, and the flesh of thy sons and of thy daughters, which the Lord thy God shall give thee, in the distress and extremity wherewith thy enemy shall oppress thee.

54 The man that is nice among you, and very delicate, shall envy his own brother, and his wife, that lieth in his bosom,

55 So that he will not give them of the flesh of his children, which he shall eat: because he hath nothing else in the siege and the want, wherewith thy enemies shall distress thee within all thy gates.

56 The tender and delicate woman, that could not go upon the ground, nor set down her foot for over much niceness and tenderness, will envy her husband who lieth in her bosom, the flesh of her son, and of her daughter,

57 And the filth of the afterbirths, that come forth from between her thighs, and the children that are born the same hour. For they shall eat them secretly for the want of all things, in the siege and distress, wherewith thy enemy shall oppress thee within thy gates.

58 If thou wilt not keep, and fulfil all the words of this law, that are written in this volume, and fear his glorious and terrible name: that is, The Lord thy God:

59 The Lord shall increase thy plagues, and the plagues of thy seed, plagues great and lasting, infirmities grievous and perpetual.

60 And he shall bring back on thee all the afflictions of Egypt, which thou wast afraid of, and they shall stick fast to thee.

61 Moreover the Lord will bring upon thee all the diseases, and plagues, that are not written in the volume of this law till he consume thee:

62 And you shall remain few in number, who before were as the stars of heaven for multitude, because thou heardst not the voice of the Lord thy God.

63 And as the Lord rejoiced upon you before doing good to you, and multiplying you: so he shall rejoice destroying and bringing you to nought, so that you shall be taken away from the land which thou shalt go in to possess.

64 The Lord shall scatter thee among all people, from the farthest parts of the earth to the ends thereof: and there thou shalt serve strange gods, which both thou art ignorant of and thy fathers, wood and stone.

65 Neither shalt thou be quiet, even in those nations, nor shall there be any rest for the sole of thy foot. For the Lord will give thee a fearful heart, and languishing eyes, and a soul consumed with pensiveness:

66 And thy life shall be as it were hanging before thee. Thou shalt fear night and day, neither shalt thou trust thy life.

67 In the morning thou shalt say: Who will grant me evening? and at evening: Who will grant me morning? for the fearfulness of thy heart, wherewith thou shalt be terrified, and for those things which thou shalt see with thy eyes.

68 The Lord shall bring thee again with ships into Egypt, by the way whereof he said to thee that thou shouldst see it no more. There shalt thou be set to sale to thy enemies for bondmen and bondwomen, and no man shall buy you.

   

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Arcana Coelestia # 9278

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9278. 'Six days you shall do your work' means a state of labour and conflict, when a person is governed by external delights that must be joined to things that are internal. This is clear from the meaning of 'six days' that come before the seventh, as states of labour and conflict, dealt with in 737, 900, 8510, 8888, 8975, the labour and conflict during them being meant by 'the work' that will be done on those days. 'The work' done during the six days and 'the rest' on the seventh day mean the things experienced by a person in his first state and in his second while being regenerated, and also those experienced by him after he has been regenerated. Regarding a person's first and second states while he is being regenerated, see above in 9274; and regarding the things experienced by him after he has been regenerated, 9213. The purpose of these experiences is that external things may be joined to internal ones; for there is an external man, which is also called natural, and there is an internal man, which is called spiritual. The external man is in contact with the world, and the internal with heaven.

[2] Divine order demands that heaven should rule the world with a person and not the world rule heaven with him; for when heaven rules a person, the Lord rules him, but when the world rules a person, the hells rule him. The natural disposition which a person is born with is such that he loves the world and self more than heaven and the Lord; and since this is the opposite of Divine order, an inversion must take place through regeneration. It takes place when the things that belong to heaven and the Lord are loved more than those which belong to the world and self. This is the reason why a person who has been regenerated, and also one who is in heaven, passes through two states that alternate with each other, in one of which external things prevail and in the other internal ones prevail; for by means of this alternation of states the external things are brought into agreement with the internal and at length made subordinate to them.

[3] When the external things prevail the person experiences labour and conflict; for he is immersed in the kind of life which savours of the world and into which the hells enter from every side, unceasingly endeavouring to engage in molestation, indeed to exercise control over the things of heaven with the person. But the Lord unceasingly protects and delivers him. This is the reason for the labour and conflict which are meant by the six days of the week in which work must be done. When however the internal things prevail, then - because the person is in heaven with the Lord - the labour and conflict come to an end, and he enjoys peace and serenity, in which also a joining together takes place. These blessings are what are meant by 'the seventh day'. The more internal aspects of the human being have been created in the image of heaven and the more external in the image of the world, so that the human being is a miniature form of heaven, also of the world, thus a microcosm, as the ancients called him, see 6057. So it is that Divine order demands that the Lord coming by way of heaven should rule the world with a person, and not at all vice versa.

[4] The nature of the labour and conflict experienced by the person when external things prevail may be recognized from this, that his state at that time is such that he is stirred by the world and indifferent towards heaven, unless it appears to him as the world does. But then the light by which he sees is so dim that he can only suppose that external things flow into internal ones, consequently that the eye sees or the ear hears by itself, that objects seen or heard by them are what produce thoughts and shape the understanding part of the mind, and that this gives him the ability to believe in and love God all by himself, and so to see heaven from the world. He cannot be easily led away from this illusion until he has been raised from external things to internal ones, and so to the light of heaven. Then he begins to perceive that things belonging to the world with him, thus those belonging to the body and its senses, see and act by means of influx from heaven, that is, from the Lord coming by way of heaven, and not at all by themselves. This goes to show why it is that a person thinking on the level of the senses supposes that his life is derived entirely from the world and the natural order, that there is no hell nor any heaven, and finally that there is no God. As a consequence he derides everything of the Church so far as he himself is concerned but is all in favour of it so far as the simple are concerned, as the means in addition to laws to keep them in check.

[5] From all this people may know what is meant by a situation in which external things prevail and not at the same time internal ones, and that when external things prevail a person feels indifferent towards what belongs to heaven or what belongs to the Lord and sees it in only dim light. They may also know who exactly in the world are the intelligent and wise, namely those who are governed by the Church's truth and good because they are recipients of wisdom from heaven, and who exactly are the stupid and foolish, namely those who are not governed by the Church's truth or good because the world is their only source of knowledge. And those among them who use worldly knowledge to set themselves firmly against the Church's truth and good are more foolish and stupid than the rest, no matter how much they suppose themselves to excel others in intelligence and wisdom and call people simple if they lead a good life based on the truths taught by doctrine. But such people's simplicity is wisdom in angels' eyes; and after death they are raised by the Lord into angelic wisdom.

[6] The Lord also teaches that this is so, in Matthew,

Therefore I speak in parables, because those who see do not see, and those who hear do not hear, nor do they understand. Matthew 13:13-14.

In John,

I will send the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees Him nor knows Him. Yet a little while, the world will see Me no longer. John 14:17, 19.

The world's inability to receive the Spirit of truth 'because it neither sees Him nor knows Him' means that it will not acknowledge the Lord with faith in the heart, because external things belonging to the world will obscure [Him]. This being so, is there anyone at the present day who worships Him as the Lord of the whole of heaven and of earth, Matthew 28:18? Yet all who are in heaven, and so with whom internal things prevail, see the Lord as their only God.

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

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Arcana Coelestia # 6366

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6366. 'Your father's sons will bow down to you' means that truths will submit themselves of their own accord. This is clear from the meaning of 'bowing down' as submitting oneself, and from the meaning of 'father's sons' as truths that spring from spiritual good; for 'the sons of Israel' are spiritual truths, 5414, 5879, 5951, and 'Israel' is spiritual good, 5801, 5803, 5806, 5812, 5817, 5819, 5826, 5833. The reason why those truths submit themselves of their own accord is that when celestial love, represented by 'Judah', flows into spiritual truths, represented by 'the sons of Israel', it rearranges them into order and submits them in that condition to the Lord. For by flowing into spiritual things what is celestial has the capacity to produce that effect; that is, good has that capacity by flowing into truth. This also explains why the Lord's celestial kingdom is the inmost or third heaven, thus is the one closest to the Lord, while His spiritual kingdom is the middle or second heaven, and so is further away from the Lord. It is because they are arranged in this order that the Lord flows indirectly into the spiritual kingdom by way of the celestial kingdom, as well as directly. The nature of His inflow is such that the spiritual kingdom is maintained in order by means of the celestial and in that condition made submissive to the Lord. The inflow takes place from the celestial kingdom through love towards the neighbour, since that love is the exterior of the celestial kingdom and the interior of the spiritual kingdom and causes the two to be joined together, see 5922.

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