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Exodus 4

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1 Moses answered and said: They will not believe me, nor hear my voice, but they will say: The Lord hath not appeared to thee.

2 Then he said to him: What is that thou holdest in thy hand? He answered: A rod.

3 And the Lord said: Cast it down upon the ground. He cast it down, and it was turned into a serpent: so that Moses fled from it.

4 And the Lord said: Put out thy hand and take it by the tail. He Put forth his hand, and took hold of it, and it was turned into a rod.

5 That they may believe, saith he, that the Lord God of their fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, hath appeared to thee.

6 And the Lord said again: Put thy hand into thy bosom. And when he had Put it into his bosom, he brought it forth leprous as snow.

7 And he said: Put back thy hand into thy bosom. He Put it back, and brought it out again, and it was like the other flesh.

8 If they will not believe thee, saith he, nor hear the voice of the former sign, they will believe the word of the latter sign.

9 But if they will not even believe these two signs, nor hear thy voice: take of the river water, and pour it out upon the dry land, and whatsoever thou drawest out of the river shall be turned into blood.

10 Moses said: I beseech thee, Lord. I am not eloquent from yesterday and the day before: and since thou hast spoken to thy servant, I have more impediment and slowness of tongue.

11 The Lord said to him: Who made man's mouth? or who made the dumb and the deaf, the seeing and the blind? did not I?

12 Go therefore and I will be in thy mouth: and I will teach thee what thou shalt speak.

13 But he said: I beseech thee, Lord send whom thou wilt send.

14 The Lord being angry at Moses, said Aaron the Levite is thy brother, I know that he is eloquent: behold he cometh forth to meet thee, and seeing thee shall be glad at heart.

15 Speak to him, and put my words in his mouth: and I will be in thy mouth, and in his mouth, and will shew you what you must do.

16 He shall speak in thy stead to the people, and shall be thy mouth: but thou shalt be to him in those things that pertain to God.

17 And take this rod in thy hand, wherewith thou shalt do the signs.

18 Moses went his way, and returned to Jethro his father in law and said to him: I will go and return to my brethren into Egypt, that I may see if they be yet alive. And Jethro said to him: go in peace.

19 And the Lord said to Moses, in Madian: Go, and return into Egypt: for they are all dead that sought thy life.

20 Moses therefore took his wife, and his sons, and set them upon an ass: and returned into Egypt, carrying the rod of God in his hand.

21 And the Lord said to him as he was returning into Egypt: See that thou do all the wonders before Pharao, which I have put in thy hand: I shall harden his heart, and he will not let the people go.

22 And thou shalt say to him: Thus saith the Lord: Israel is my son, my firstborn.

23 I have said to thee: Let my son go, that he may serve me, and thou wouldst not let him go: behold I will kill thy son, thy firstborn.

24 And when he was in his journey, in the inn, the Lord met him, and would have killed him.

25 Immediately Sephora took a very sharp stone, and circumcised the fore skin of her son, and touched his feet and said: A bloody spouse art thou to me.

26 And he let him go after she had said A bloody spouse art thou to me, because of the circumcision.

27 And the Lord said to Aaron: Go into the desert to meet Moses. And he went forth to meet him in the mountain of God, and kissed him.

28 And Moses told Aaron all the words of the Lord, by which he had sent him, and the signs that he had commanded.

29 And they came together, and they assembled all the ancients of the children of Israel.

30 And Aaron spoke all the words which the Lord had said to Moses: and he wrought the signs before the people,

31 And the people believed. And they heard that the Lord had visited the children of Israel: and that he had looked upon their affliction: and falling down they adored.

   

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Apocalypse Revealed # 438

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438. They had tails like scorpions. (9:10) This symbolizes the Word's truths falsified, by which they induce a mental numbness.

A tail symbolizes the last extension of the head, because the brain extends through the spinal column into the tail. Consequently the head and the tail are united as their first and last elements. Consequently, when the head symbolizes a justifying and saving faith alone, the tail symbolizes in summary all its proofs, and as these are taken from the Word, it symbolizes the Word's truths falsified.

Everyone who assumes some principle of religion on the basis of on his own intelligence and puts it at the head of the rest, also takes proof passages from the Word and puts them at the tail, thus inducing a mental numbness in others and so doing them injury. That is why we are told that "they had tails like scorpions," and next, that "there were stings in their tails," and that "their power was to hurt men." For a scorpion symbolizes a persuasiveness that induces a numbness in the intellect (no. 425).

To be assured that the tail is an extension of the brain through the spinal column to its final point, ask any anatomist and he will tell you. Or look at a dog or some other fierce animal that has a tail, and if you treat it kindly and make yourself agreeable to it, you will see its stiffened back soften and its tail move in a corresponding manner. But on the other hand, if you annoy it, its backbone stiffens.

[2] The primary tenet of the intellect that is assumed as a principle is symbolized by the head, and its final expression by the tail, also in the following passages:

...He will cut off head and tail from Israel... The elder and honorable man is the head; but the prophet who teaches lies is the tail. (Isaiah 9:14-15)

There will not be any work for Egypt that the head or tail... may do. (Isaiah 19:15)

Nothing else is symbolized by the dragon's seven heads and the tail by which it drew a third of the stars of heaven and threw them to the earth, in Revelation 12:3-4; and also by the tails like serpents, having heads, with which they do harm, in verse 19 of this chapter.

Since the tail symbolizes the final element, and the final element embraces all the rest, therefore Jehovah said to Moses,

"...take (the serpent) by the tail." And he... caught it, and it became a rod... (Exodus 4:3-4)

The priests were also commanded therefore to remove the whole tail close to the backbone and to sacrifice it with the fat on the entrails, the kidneys, the intestines, and the liver (Leviticus 3:9-11; 8:25; 9:19, Exodus 29:22).

To be shown that the final element contains and embraces all the prior ones, see The Doctrine of the New Jerusalem Regarding the Sacred Scripture, nos. 38 65, and Angelic Wisdom Regarding Divine Love and Wisdom, nos. 209-216 217-222.

  
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Many thanks to the General Church of the New Jerusalem, and to Rev. N.B. Rogers, translator, for the permission to use this translation.