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Exodus 34

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1 And after this he said: Hew thee two tables of stone like unto the former, and I will write upon them the words which were in the tables, which thou brokest.

2 Be ready in the morning, that thou mayst forthwith go up into mount Sinai, and thou shalt stand with me upon the top of the mount.

3 Let no man go up with thee: and let not any man be seen throughout all the mount: neither let the oxen nor the sheep feed over against it.

4 Then he cut out two tables of stone, such as had been before: and rising very early he went up into the mount Sinai, as the Lord had commanded him, carrying with him the tables.

5 And when the Lord was come down in a cloud, Moses stood with him, calling upon the name of the Lord.

6 And when he passed before him, he said: O the Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious, patient and of much compassion, and true,

7 Who keepest mercy unto thousands: who takest away iniquity, and wickedness, and sin, and no man of himself is innocent before thee. Who renderest the iniquity of the fathers to the children, and to the grandchildren, unto the third and fourth generation.

8 And Moses making haste, bowed down prostrate unto the earth, and adoring,

9 Said: If I have found grace in thy sight: O Lord, I beseech thee, that thou wilt go with us, (for it is a stiffnecked people,) and take away our iniquities and sin, and possess us.

10 The Lord answered: I will make a covenant in the sight of all. I will do signs such as were never seen upon the earth, nor in any nation: that this people, in the midst of whom thou art, may see the terrible work of The Lord which I will do.

11 Observe all things which this day I command thee: I myself will drive out before thy face the Amorrhite, and the Chanaanite, and the Hethite, and the Pherezite, and the Hevite, and the Jebusite.

12 Beware thou never join in friendship with the inhabitants of that land, which may be thy ruin:

13 But destroy their altars, break their statues, and cut down their groves:

14 Adore not any strange god. The Lord his name is Jealous, he is a jealous God.

15 Make no covenant with the men of those countries lest, when they have committed fornication with their gods, and have adored their idols, some one call thee to eat of the things sacrificed.

16 Neither shalt thou take of their daughters a wife for thy son, lest after they themselves have committed fornication, they make thy sons also to commit fornication with their gods.

17 Thou shalt not make to thyself any molten gods.

18 Thou shalt keep the feast of the unleavened bread. Seven days shalt thou eat unleavened bread, as I commanded thee in the time of the month of the new corn: for in the month of the springtime thou camest out from Egypt.

19 All of the male kind, that openeth the womb, shall be mine. Of all beasts, both of oxen and of sheep, it shall be mine.

20 The firstling of an ass thou shalt redeem with a sheep: but if thou wilt not give a price for it, it shall be slain. The firstborn of thy sons thou shalt redeem: neither shalt thou appear before me empty.

21 Six days shalt thou work, the seventh day thou shalt cease to plough, and to reap.

22 Thou shalt keep the feast of weeks with the firstfruits of the corn of thy wheat harvest, and the feast when the time of the year returneth that all things are laid in.

23 Three times in a year all thy males shall appear in the sight of the Almighty Lord the God of Israel.

24 For when I shall have taken away the nations from thy face, and shall have enlarged thy borders, no man shall lie in wait against thy land when thou shalt go up, and appear in the sight of the Lord thy God thrice in a year.

25 Thou shalt not offer the blood of my sacrifice upon leaven: neither shall there remain in the morning any thing of the victim of the solemnity of the Lord.

26 The first of the fruits of thy ground thou shalt offer in the house of the Lord thy God. Thou shalt not boil a kid in the milk of his dam.

27 And the Lord said to Moses: Write these words by which I have made a covenant both with thee and with Israel.

28 And he was there with the Lord forty days and forty nights: he neither ate bread nor drank water, and he wrote upon the tables the ten words of the covenant.

29 And when Moses came down from the mount Sinai, he held the two tables of the testimony, and he knew not that his face was horned from the conversation of the Lord.

30 And Aaron and the children of Israel seeing the face of Moses horned, were afraid to come near.

31 And being called by him, they returned, both Aaron and the rulers of the congregation. And after that he spoke to them.

32 And all the children of Israel came to him: and he gave them in commandment all that he had heard of the Lord in mount Sinai.

33 And having done speaking, he put a veil upon his face.

34 But when he went in to the Lord, and spoke with him, he took it away until he came forth, and then he spoke to the children of Israel all things that had been commanded him.

35 And they saw that the face of Moses when he came out was horned, but he covered his face again, if at any time he spoke to them.

   

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Arcana Coelestia # 2405

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2405. That 'as dawn ascended' means when the Lord's kingdom draws near is clear from the meaning of 'the dawn' or morning in the Word. Since the subject in this chapter is the successive states of a Church, what happened in the evening, then what happened during the night have been referred to first. What took place when it was twilight comes now, and further on what took place after sunrise. Twilight is expressed here by 'as dawn ascended', which means the time when the upright are separated from the evil. This separation is described in the present verse to verse 22 as Lot being brought out together with his wife and daughters and being saved. The fact that separation takes place prior to judgement is clear from the Lord's words in Matthew,

Before Him will be gathered all the nations, and He will separate them one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. Matthew 25:32.

[2] In the Word that period of time or state is called 'the dawn' because that is when the Lord comes, or what amounts to the same, when His kingdom draws near. It is similar with the good, for at that time something akin to early morning twilight or the dawn shines with them. This explains why in the Word the Lord's coming is compared to and also called 'the morning'. Its comparison to the morning is seen in Hosea,

Jehovah will revive us after two days, on the third day He will raise us up, and we shall live before Him. And we shall know, and we shall press on to know Jehovah. As the dawn is His going forth. Hosea 6:2-3.

'Two days' stands for the period of time and the state which precedes. 'Third day' stands for judgement or the Lord's coming, and so for the approach of His kingdom, 720, 901 - a coming or approach which is compared to 'the dawn'.

[3] In Samuel,

The God of Israel is like morning light, [when] the sun rises on a cloudless morning; from brightness, from rain, grass comes out of the earth. 2 Samuel 23:4.

'The God of Israel' stands for the Lord, for no other God of Israel was meant in that Church, where every single feature of that Church was representative of Him. In Joel,

The day of Jehovah is coming, for it is near, a day of darkness and thick darkness, a day of cloud and gloom, like the dawn spread over the mountains. Joel 2:1-2.

This too refers to the Lord's coming and His kingdom. The words 'a day of darkness and thick darkness' are used because at that time the good are separated from the evil, as Lot was here from the men of Sodom; and after the good have been separated the evil perish.

[4] The Lord's coming or the approach of His kingdom is not compared to the morning but actually called such, as in Daniel,

The Holy One said, For how long is the vision, the continual [burnt offering], and the desolating transgression? He said to me, Up to the evening [when it is becoming] morning two thousand three hundred times, and the Holy One will be justified. The vision of the evening and the morning which has been told is the truth. Daniel 8:13-14, 26.

'The morning' here clearly stands for the Lord's coming. In David,

Your people are free-will offerings, in the day of Your power, in the beauties of holiness, from the womb of the dawn You have the dew of Your nativity. Psalms 110:3.

The whole of this psalm refers to the Lord and His victories in temptations, which are meant by 'the day of power and the beauties of His holiness'. 'From the womb of the dawn' means Himself, thus the Divine Love from which He fought.

[5] In Zephaniah,

Jehovah is righteous in the midst of her. He will do no wrong. In the morning, in the morning He will bring His judgement to light. Zephaniah 3:5.

'morning' stands for the time and the state when judgement takes place, which is the same as the Lord's coming, and this in turn is the same as the approach of His kingdom.

[6] Since 'the morning' meant these things, Aaron and his sons, to provide the same representation, were commanded to set up a lamp and tend it from evening till morning before Jehovah, Exodus 27:21. The 'evening' referred to here is the twilight prior to morning, 2323. For a similar reason it was commanded that the fire on the altar was to be rekindled every dawn, Leviticus 6:12; also that none of the paschal lamb and the consecrated elements of sacrifices were to remain until the morning, Exodus 12:10; 23:18; 34:25; Leviticus 22:29-30; Numbers 9:12 - by which was meant that when the Lord came sacrifices would come to an end.

[7] In a general sense 'morning' is used to describe both the time when dawn breaks and the time when the sun rises. 'morning' in this case stands for judgement in regard to the good as well as on the evil, as in the present chapter - 'The sun had gone forth over the earth and Lot came to Zoar; and Jehovah rained on Sodom and Gomorrah brimstone and fire', verses 23-24. It in like manner stands for judgement on the evil, in David,

In the mornings I will destroy all the wicked of the land, to cut off from the city of Jehovah all workers of iniquity. Psalms 101:8.

And in Jeremiah,

Let that man be like the cities which Jehovah overthrew, and He does not repent; and let him hear a cry in the morning. Jeremiah 20:16.

[8] Seeing that 'the morning' in the proper sense means the Lord, His coming, and so the approach of His kingdom, what else is meant by 'the morning' becomes clear, namely the rise of a new Church, for that Church is the Lord's kingdom on earth. That kingdom is meant both in a general and in a particular sense, and indeed in a specific sense, the general being when any Church on earth is established anew; the particular, when a person is being regenerated and becoming a new man, for the Lord's kingdom is in that case being established in him and he is becoming the Church; and the specific, as often as good flowing from love and faith is at work with him, for this is what constitutes the Lord's coming. Consequently the Lord's resurrection on the third morning, Mark 16:2, 9; Luke 24:1; John 20:1, embodies in the particular and the specific senses the truth that He rises daily, indeed every single moment, in the minds of regenerate persons.

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