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Leviticus 24

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1 And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying:

2 Command the children of Israel, that they bring unto thee the finest and dearest oil of olives, to furnish the lamps continually,

3 Without the veil of the testimony in the tabernacle of the covenant. And Aaron shall set them from evening until morning before the Lord, by a perpetual service and rite in your generations.

4 They shall be set upon the most pure candlestick before the Lord continually.

5 Thou shalt take also fine hour, and shalt bake twelve leaves thereof, two tenths shall be in every loaf :

6 And thou shalt set them six and six one against another upon the most clean table before the Lord:

7 And thou shalt put upon them the dearest frankincense, that the bread may be for a memorial of the oblation of the Lord.

8 Every sabbath they shall be changed before the Lord, being received of the children of Israel by an everlasting covenant:

9 And they shall be Aaron's and his sons', that they may eat them in the holy place: because it is most holy of the sacrifices of the Lord by a perpetual right.

10 And behold there went out the son of a woman of Israel, whom she had of an Egyptian, among the children of Israel, and fell at words in the camp with a man of Israel.

11 And when he had blasphemed the name, and had cursed it, he was brought to Moses: (now his mother was called Salumith, the daughter of Dabri, of the tribe of Dan:)

12 And they put him into prison, till they might know what the Lord would command.

13 And the Lord spoke to Moses,

14 Saying: Bring forth the blasphemer without the camp, and let them that heard him, put their hands upon his head, and let all the people stone him.

15 And thou shalt speak to the children of Israel: the man that curseth his God, shall bear his sin:

16 And he that blasphemeth the name of the Lord, dying let him die: all the multitude shall stone him, whether he be a native or a stranger. He that blasphemeth the name of the Lord, dying let him die.

17 He that striketh and killeth a man, dying let him die.

18 He that killeth a beast, shall make it good, that is to say, shall give beast for beast.

19 He that giveth a blemish to any of his neighbours: as he hath done, so shall it be done to him:

20 Breach for breach, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, shall he restore. What blemish he gave, the like shall he be compelled to suffer.

21 He that striketh a beast, shall render another. He that striketh a man shall be punished.

22 Let there be equal judgment among you, whether he be a stranger, or a native that offends: because I am the Lord your God.

23 And Moses spoke to the children of Israel: and they brought forth him that had blasphemed, without the camp, and they stoned him. And the children of Israel did as the Lord had commanded Moses.

   

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Moses

  

At the inmost level, the story of Moses -- like all of the Bible -- is about the Lord and his spiritual development during his human life as Jesus. Moses's role represents establishing forms of worship and to make the people obedient. As such, his primary representation is "the Law of God," the rules God gave the people of Israel to follow in order to represent spiritual things. This can be interpreted narrowly as the Ten Commandments, more broadly as the books of Moses, or most broadly as the entire Bible. Fittingly, his spiritual meaning is complex and important, and evolves throughout the course of his life. To understand it, it helps to understand the meaning of the events in which he was involved. At a more basic level, Moses's story deals with the establishment of the third church to serve as a container of knowledge of the Lord. The first such church -- the Most Ancient Church, represented by Adam and centered on love of the Lord -- had fallen prey to human pride and was destroyed. The second -- the Ancient Church, represented by Noah and the generations that followed him -- was centered on love of the neighbor, wisdom from the Lord and knowledge of the correspondences between natural and spiritual things. It fell prey to the pride of intelligence, however -- represented by the Tower of Babel -- and at the time of Moses was in scattered pockets that were sliding into idolatry. On an external level, of course, Moses led the people of Israel out of Egypt through 40 years in the wilderness to the border of the homeland God had promised them. Along the way, he established and codified their religious system, and oversaw the creation of its most holy objects. Those rules and the forms of worship they created were given as containers for deeper ideas about the Lord, deeper truth, and at some points -- especially when he was first leading his people away from Egypt, a time before the rules had been written down -- Moses takes on the deeper representation of Divine Truth itself, truth from the Lord. At other times -- especially after Mount Sinai -- he has a less exalted meaning, representing the people of Israel themselves due to his position as their leader. Through Moses the Lord established a third church, one more external than its predecessors but one that could preserve knowledge of the Lord and could, through worship that represented spiritual things, make it possible for the Bible to be written and passed to future generations.