Apocalypse Revealed # 939
939. The fact that seeing the Lord's face does not mean seeing His face, but knowing and acknowledging Him as He is in respect to His Divine attributes, of which there are many, and that people conjoined with Him by love know Him and in that way see His face, can be seen from the following passages:
To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices to Me... ...When you come to see the face of Jehovah... (Isaiah 1:11-12)
My heart said..., "Seek my face. Your face, Jehovah, I am seeking." (Psalms 27:8)
We will shout joyfully to the Rock of our salvation. Let us come before His face with confession. (Psalms 95:1-2)
My soul thirsts... for the living God. When shall I come to see the face of God? ...yet shall I confess to Him the salvation of His countenance. (Psalms 42:2, 5)
They shall not see My face empty-handed. (Exodus 23:15)
...to come... to placate the face of Jehovah. (Zechariah 8:21-22, cf. Malachi 1:9)
Make Your face shine upon Your servant. (Psalms 31:16)
Who will show us any good? Lift up the light of Your countenance upon us, Jehovah. (Psalms 4:6)
They shall walk, O Jehovah, in the light of Your countenance. (Psalms 89:15)
...O God, cause Your face to shine, that we may be saved! (Psalms 80:3, 7, 19)
God be merciful to us and bless us. May He cause His face to shine upon us. (Psalms 67:1)
Jehovah bless you and keep you; Jehovah make His face shine upon you and be merciful to you; Jehovah lift up His countenance upon you, and give you peace. (Numbers 6:24-26)
You hide them in the secret place of Your countenance... (Psalms 31:20)
You have set... our hidden secret in the light of Your countenance. (Psalms 90:8)
(Jehovah) said (to Moses), "My countenance will go... (Moses) said..., "If Your countenance does not go..., do not bring us down from here." (Exodus 33:14-15)
The bread on the table in the Tabernacle was called [literally] "the bread of faces" (Exodus 25:30, Numbers 4:7).
[2] We are often told, too, that Jehovah hid His face or turned His face away, as in the following:
...for (their) wickedness I have hidden My face from (them). (Jeremiah 33:5, cf. Ezekiel 7:22)
Your sins have hidden (God's) face from you... (Isaiah 59:2)
The face of Jehovah... will no longer regard them. (Lamentations 4:16)
(Jehovah) will hide His face from them..., according as they have made their works evil. (Micah 3:4)
You hid Your face... (Psalms 30:7, cf. 44:24; 104:29)
I will forsake them, and I will hide My face from them... I will surely hide My face... because of all the evil which they have done... (Deuteronomy 31:17-18)
And so on elsewhere, as in Isaiah 8:17; Ezekiel 39:23, 28-29; Deuteronomy 32:20.
[3] In an opposite sense, the face of Jehovah symbolizes anger and aversion, because an evil person turns away from the Lord, and when he turns away, it seems to him as though the Lord had turned away and was angry, as is clear from the following passages:
...I have set My face against this city for its evil... (Jeremiah 21:10, cf. 44:11)
I will set My face against that man and... devastate him... (Ezekiel 14:7-8)
I will set My face against them... and... fire shall devour them..., when I set My face against them. (Ezekiel 15:7)
...(he) who eats any blood, I will set My face against that soul... (Leviticus 17:10)
At the rebuke of Your countenance they perished. (Psalms 80:16)
The face of Jehovah is against those who do evil... (Psalms 34:16)
...I send an angel before you... Beware of his face..., for he will not endure your transgression. (Exodus 23:20-21)
Let Your enemies be scattered, and let those who hate You flee from Your countenance. (Numbers 10:35)
(I saw one sitting on the throne) from whose face the earth and heaven fled away. (Revelation 20:11)
That no one can see the Lord as He is in Himself, as we said above, is apparent from the following:
(Jehovah said to Moses,) "You cannot see My face; for no man shall see Me, and live." (Exodus 33:18-23)
That people nevertheless saw the Lord and lived, because He appeared by means of an angel, is apparent from Genesis 32:30, 1 Judges 13:22-23, 2 and elsewhere.
Poznámky pod čarou:
1. Jacob called the name of the place Peniel: "For I have seen God face to face, and my life is preserved."
2. Manoah said to his wife, "We shall surely die, because we have seen God!" But his wife said to him, "If Jehovah had desired to kill us, He would not have accepted a burnt offering and a grain offering from our hands, nor would He have shown us all these things, nor would He have told us such things as these at this time."
Arcana Coelestia # 1904
1904. That 'Sarai, Abram's wife, took' means the affection for truth, which in the genuine sense is 'Sarai the wife', is clear from the meaning of 'Sarai' as truth allied to good, and from the meaning of 'wife' as affection, dealt with already in 915, 1468. There are two affections, distinct and separate - the affection for good and the affection for truth. While a person is being regenerated the affection for truth takes the lead, for it is an affection for truth for the sake of good that moves him; but once he has been regenerated the affection for good takes the lead, and it is now an affection for truth originating in good that moves him. The affection for good belongs to the will, the affection for truth to the understanding. The most ancient people established a marriage so to speak between these two affections. They used to refer to good (or the love of good) and truth (or the love of truth) as Man, calling the former 'the husband' and the latter 'the wife'. The comparison of good and truth to a marriage has its origins in the heavenly marriage.
[2] Regarded in themselves good and truth do not possess any life, but they derive their life from love or affection. They are merely the instruments that serve life. Consequently as is the love producing the affection for good and truth, so is the life; for the whole of life constitutes the whole of love or affection. This is why 'Sarai his wife' in the genuine sense means the affection for truth. And because the Intellectual desired the Rational as its offspring, and because what she says is an expression of that desire or affection, this verse contains the explicit wording, 'Sarai, Abram's wife, gave to Abram her husband' which would be an unnecessary repetition - for in themselves these words would be quite superfluous - if such matters were not embodied within the internal sense.
[3] Intellectual truth is distinct and separate from rational truth, and rational truth from factual truth, just as what is internal, what is intermediate, and what is external are. Intellectual truth is internal, rational truth is intermediate, while factual truth is external. These are quite distinct and separate because one is interior to another. With everyone intellectual truth, which is internal, or that present within the inmost part of him, is not his own but is the Lord's with him. From this the Lord flows into the rational, where truth first appears as if it were the person's own, and through the rational into his faculty of knowing. From these considerations it is clear that nobody can possibly think as of himself from intellectual truth, but from rational truth and factual truth because these do appear as if they were his.
[4] Only the Lord, when He lived in the world, thought from intellectual truth, for that truth was His own Divine truth joined to good, or the Divine spiritual joined to the Divine celestial. In this respect the Lord was different from all others. Man in no way possesses the ability to think from the Divine existing within himself as his essential self, nor can that ability possibly exist within man, only within Him who was conceived from Jehovah. Because He thought from intellectual truth, that is, from the love or affection for intellectual truth, from that truth also He desired the Rational. This is why it is stated here that 'Sarai, Abram's wife', by whom is meant the affection for intellectual truth, 'took Hagar the Egyptian and gave her to Abram her husband as his wife (mulier)'.
[5] No other arcana concealed here can be brought out and explained intelligibly because the human being dwells in very great obscurity regarding his own internals. Indeed he has no conception of these, for he identifies the rational and the intellectual degrees of the mind with the factual degree, not knowing that these degrees are distinct and separate, so distinct in fact that the intellectual is able to exist without the rational, as also can the rational, while subordinate to the intellectual, exist without the factual. This must inevitably seem absurd to those wholly immersed in factual knowledge, but it is nevertheless the truth. It is not possible however for anyone to have truth present in the factual degree of his mind, that is to say, to have an affection for it and a belief in it, if truth is not present in the rational, into which and through which the Lord flows in from the intellectual degree. These arcana do not lie open to man's view except in the next life.
