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Numbers 5

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1 And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying:

2 Command the children of Israel, that they cast out of the camp every leper, and whosoever hath an issue of seed, or is defiled by the dead:

3 Whether it be man or woman, cast ye them out of the camp, lest they defile it when I shall dwell with you.

4 And the children of Israel did so, and they cast them forth without the camp, as the Lord had spoken to Moses.

5 And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying:

6 Say to the children of Israel: When a man or woman shall have committed any of all the sins that men are wont to commit, and by negligence shall have transgressed the commandment of the Lord, and offended,

7 They shall confess their sin, and restore the principal itself, and the fifth part over and above, to him against whom they have sinned.

8 But if there be no one to receive it, they shall give it to the Lord, and it shall be the priest's, besides the ram that is offered for expiation, to be an atoning sacrifice.

9 an the firstfruits also, which the children of Israel offer, belong to the priest:

10 And whatsoever is offered into the sanctuary by every one, and is delivered into the hands of the priest, it shall be his.

11 And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying:

12 Speak to the children of Israel, and thou shalt say to them: The man whose wife shall have gone astray, and contemning her husband,

13 Shall have slept with another man, and her husband cannot discover it, but the adultery is secret, and cannot be proved by witnesses, because she was not found in the adultery:

14 If the spirit of jealousy stir up the husband against his wife, who either is defiled, or is charged with false suspicion,

15 He shall bring her to the priest, and shall offer an oblation for her, the tenth part of a measure of barley meal: he shall not pour oil thereon, nor put frank- incense upon it: because it is a sacrifice of jealousy, and an oblation searching out adultery.

16 The priest therefore shall offer it, and set it before the Lord.

17 And he shall take holy water in an earthen vessel, and he shall cast a little earth of the pavement of the tabernacle into it.

18 And when the woman shall stand before the Lord, he shall uncover her head, and shall, put on her hands the sacrifice of remembrance, and the oblation of jealousy: and he himself shall hold the most bitter waters, whereon he hath heaped curses with execration.

19 And he shall adjure her, and shall say: If another man hath not slept with thee, and if thou be not defiled by forsaking thy husband's bed, these most bitter waters, on which I have heaped curses, shall not hurt thee.

20 But if thou hast gone aside from thy husband, and art defiled, and hast lain with another man:

21 These curses shall light upon thee: The Lord make thee a curse, and an example for all among his people: may he make thy thigh to rot, and may thy belly swell and burst asunder.

22 Let the cursed waters enter into thy belly, and may thy womb swell and thy thigh rot. And the woman shall answer, Amen, amen.

23 And the priest shall write these curses in a book, and shall wash them out with the most bitter waters, upon which he hath heaped the curses,

24 And he shall give them her to drink. And when she hath drunk them up,

25 The priest shall take from her hand the sacrifice of jealousy, and shall elevate it before the Lord, and shall put it upon the altar: yet so as first,

26 To take a handful of the sacrifice of that which is offered, and burn it upon the altar: and so give the most bitter waters to the woman to drink.

27 And when she hath drunk them, if she be defiled, and having despised her husband be guilty of adultery, the malediction shall go through her, and her belly swelling, her thigh shall rot: and the woman shall be a curse, and an example to all the people.

28 But if she be not defiled, she shall not be hurt, and shall bear children.

29 This is the law of jealousy. If a woman hath gone aside from her husband, and be defiled,

30 And the husband stirred up by the spirit of jealousy bring her before the Lord, and the priest do to her according to all things that are here written:

31 The husband shall be blameless, and she shall bear her iniquity.

   

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True Christian Religion # 614

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614. What has been said can serve to establish that the forgiveness of sins is not their rooting out or wiping away, but their removal and so separation. All the evil remains that a person has by his deeds made his own. Since the forgiveness of sins is their removal and separation, it follows that a person is held back from evil and kept in good by the Lord. This is the gift he receives by regeneration.

I once heard someone in the lowest heaven say that he was free from sins because they had been wiped away, 'by the blood of Christ' he added. But since he was inside heaven, and made this mistake through ignorance, he was plunged into his own sins, and as they recurred to him, he acknowledged them. This led him to accept a new belief, that everyone, man as well as angel, is held back from evils and kept in good by the Lord.

[2] This makes it plain what the forgiveness of sins is, not an instantaneous event, but the consequence of regeneration, advancing in step with it. The removal of sins, what is called their being forgiven, can be compared with the casting out of filth from the Children of Israel's camp in the desert, which lay all around them; for their camp represented heaven, the desert hell. It can also be compared with the removal of the nations in the land of Canaan by the Children of Israel, and the removal of the Jebusites from Jerusalem; they were not cast out, but separated. It can also be compared with the fate of Dagon, the god of the Philistines; when the Ark was brought in, it first of all lay face down on the ground, and afterwards lay on the threshold with its head and the palms of its hands cut off; so it was not cast out, but removed.

[3] It can be compared with the demons the Lord sent into the swine, which afterwards drowned themselves in the sea; here and elsewhere in the Word the sea stands for hell. It can also be compared with the dragon's crowd, which when separated from heaven first invaded the earth, and afterwards was cast down into hell. Another comparison can be made with a wood full of wild beasts of many kinds; if it is cut down, the beasts take refuge in the surrounding thickets, and then when the ground has been levelled, the area contained within it is cultivated to make agricultural land.

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