10287. 'And he who puts any of it on a foreigner' means a joining together for those who do not acknowledge the Lord, and so who are subject to evils and to the falsities of evil. This is clear from the meaning of 'putting it on someone' - when the subject is Divine Truths, meant by the sweet-smelling ointment - as a joining together; and from the meaning of 'a foreigner' as those who do not belong to the Church, thus those who do not acknowledge the Lord, consequently who are subject to evils and falsities. Anyone who does not acknowledge the Lord does not belong to the Church; and anyone who rejects the Lord is subject to evils and falsities. For goodness and truth come from no other source than Him. The fact that such people are meant by 'foreigners' will be clear from the places in the Word which will follow below. But first something must be stated regarding the joining of Divine Truth among those who do not acknowledge the Lord. Such a joining together constitutes profanation, for profanation is a joining of Divine Truth to falsities arising from evil. The joining together that constitutes profanation is something which cannot happen with any at all except those who have first acknowledged the things which are the Church's, and especially the Lord, but subsequently reject them. For acknowledgement of the Church's truths and of the Lord leads to contact with the heavens, and consequently to an opening of a person's interiors towards heaven; and a subsequent rejection of them leads to a joining of the same truths to falsities arising from evil. For everything a person acknowledges remains implanted in him; nothing present with a person which has entered through acknowledgement is destroyed.

[2] The state of a person with whom profanation exists is one in which he is in contact with the heavens and at the same time with the hells, through truths with the heavens and through the falsities of evil with the hells. As a result of this, in the next life a tearing apart takes place with such people, which destroys the whole of their inner life. After the tearing apart they hardly look like human beings any longer; they look like bones that have been scorched and have little life in them. See what has been stated and shown previously regarding profanation in the following places,

Profaners are those who have first acknowledged God's truths but subsequently reject them, 1001, 1010, 1059, 2051, 3398, 4289, 4601, 6348, 6959, 6963, 6971, 8394.

People who have rejected them since early childhood, such as Jews and others, are not profaners, 593, 1001, 1010, 1059, 3398, 3489, 6963.

The Lord takes the greatest care to guard against the occurrence of profanation with a person, 301-303, 1327, 1328, 2426, 3398, 3402, 3489, 6595.

[3] But it should be realized that the genera of profanation are very many, and the species composing those genera are very many. For there are those who profane the Church's forms of good and those who profane its truths; there are those who profane greatly and those who profane slightly; there are those who profane on a more internal level and those who profane on increasingly external levels; there are those who profane through belief contrary to the Church's truths and forms of good, there are those who profane through the life they lead, and those who profane through their worship. Consequently there exist very many hells of profaners, which are distinct and separate from one another, in accord with their different kinds of profanation. The hells of those who profane good are behind one's back, whereas the hells of profanation of truth are underfoot and to the sides. They are deeper than the hells of all other evils and are rarely opened.

[4] Those who do not acknowledge the Lord and refuse to do so, whether they are outside the Church or inside it, thus those who are subject to evils and to the falsities of evil, are meant by 'foreigners'; and in the abstract sense, without reference to actual persons, evils and the falsities of evil are meant. This is clear from very many places in the Word. The reason for saying 'those who do not acknowledge the Lord, thus those who are subject to evils and the falsities of evil' is that people who do not acknowledge the Lord are inevitably subject to evils and the falsities of evil; for the Lord is the source of all good and of all the truth of good. Those therefore who reject the Lord are subject to evils and the falsities of evil, as accords with the Lord's words in John,

Unless you believe that I am, you will die in your sins. John 8:24.

[5] The fact that such people are meant by 'foreigners' is clear from the following places: In Isaiah,

Your land will be a lonely place, your cities have been burned with fire; foreigners will devour your ground before you, and it will be a lonely place, as if overturned by foreigners ¹ . Isaiah 1:7.

Here land should not be understood by 'land', nor cities and ground by 'cities' and 'ground'. Instead the Church should be understood by 'land' and likewise by 'ground', and by 'cities' the Church's truths, called its doctrinal teachings, which are said to have been 'burned with fire' when they have been destroyed by the evils of self-love and love of the world. From this it is evident what is meant by 'foreigners will devour your ground', namely evils and the falsities of evil destroying the Church, and by 'your land will be a lonely place' and 'your cities have been burned with fire'.

'Land' or earth means the Church, see in the places referred to in 9325, and 'ground' likewise, 566, 1068.

'Cities' are the Church's doctrinal teachings, thus its truths, 2268, 2451, 2712, 2943, 3216, 4492, 4493.

'Fire' means the evil of self-love and love of the world, 1297, 1861, 2446, 5071, 5215, 6314, 6832, 7575, 9141.

[6] In Jeremiah,

Shame covered our faces when foreigners came against the sanctuaries of Jehovah's house. Jeremiah 51:51.

'Foreigners coming against the sanctuaries of Jehovah's house' are evils and the falsities of evil that go against the Church's truths and forms of good. The word 'foreigners' was used to mean members of the gentile nations who were slaves in the Jewish Church, and the gentile nations of that land also mean evil and falsities, 9320. In the same prophet,

You say, There is no hope, no; but I will love foreigners, and after them I will go. Jeremiah 2:25.

'Loving foreigners and going after them' means loving evils and the falsities of evil, and worshipping them.

[7] In Ezekiel,

I will bring a sword upon you, and will give you into the hand of foreigners. Ezekiel 11:8-9.

'Bringing a sword upon' means falsities arising from evil set in conflict against truths springing from good. 'Giving into the hand of foreigners' means to the end that they may believe and serve those falsities. For the meaning of 'a sword' as truth engaged in conflict against falsities, and in the contrary sense falsity engaged in conflict against truths, see 2799, 6353, 7102, 8294.

[8] In the same prophet,

You will die the deaths of the uncircumcised in the hand of foreigners. Ezekiel 28:10.

'The uncircumcised' are those who, for all the religious teachings they know, lead lives steeped in foul loves and the desires that go with them, 2049, 3412, 3413, 4462, 7045, 7225, the death they die being spiritual death. 'In the hand of foreigners' means subject to evils themselves and the falsities of evil.

[9] In the same prophet,

Jerusalem, an adulterous woman, takes foreigners instead of her husband. Ezekiel 16:32.

'Jerusalem, an adulterous woman' stands for the Church in which good has been adulterated; 'taking foreigners' stands for its acceptance, in life and doctrine, of evils and the falsities of evil. In Joel,

Jerusalem will be holy, and foreigners will not pass through her any longer. Joel 3:17.

Here also 'Jerusalem' stands for the Church, but one in which people acknowledge the Lord, lead good lives, and believe truths coming from the Lord. 'Foreigners will not pass through her any longer' means that evils and the falsities of evil coming from hell will not enter it.

[10] In David,

Foreigners have risen up against me, and violent ones have sought my soul. Psalms 54:3.

Here also 'foreigners' stands for evils and the falsities of evil, and 'violent ones' for these same evils and falsities acting violently against forms of good and truths. Those who see solely the literal sense of the Word take 'foreigners' to mean nothing more than those outside the Church who were rising up against David. But no ideas of actual persons enter the thinking of those in heaven, only the realities meant by them, 8343, 8985, 9007, so that they think not of people but things that are foreign or alien, that is, those which are alienated from the Church, thus evils and the falsities of evil which destroy the Church. And by 'David', against whom the foreigners were rising up, those in heaven understand the Lord, 1888, 9954.

[11] In Moses,

He forsook the God who made him, and despised the Rock of his salvation. They provoked Him to jealousy through foreign [gods]. Deuteronomy 32:15-16.

'Forsaking God' and 'despising the Rock of salvation' stand for rejecting the Lord, 'provoking through foreign [gods]' for doing so through evils and the falsities of evil, 'the Rock of salvation' being the Lord in respect of the truths of faith, see 8581. In addition to all this there are other places in which 'foreigners' stands for evils and falsities, such as Isaiah 25:2, 4-5; Jeremiah 30:8; Ezekiel 31:11-12.

[12] Since 'foreigners' meant those who are subject to evils and the falsities of evil, and consequently in the abstract sense meant evils and the falsities of evil, it was forbidden for a foreigner to eat that which was holy, Leviticus 22:10; no foreigner was permitted to come near and perform the priestly function or guard the sanctuary; and any who did come near was to be put to death, Numbers 1:51; 3:10, 38; 18:7;

[13] furthermore no incense was to be offered on foreign ² fire, and because Aaron's sons Nadab and Abihu did offer incense on it they were devoured by fire from heaven, Leviticus 10:1-2. For holy fire which was taken from the altar was a sign of love derived from God, whereas foreign fire was a sign of love coming from hell, and therefore also of evils and the desires that go with them, see 1297, 1861, 2446, 5071, 5215, 6314, 6832, 7575, 9141.

[14] Mention is also made in the Word of those who are foreign-born, a different word being used in the original language from that rendered 'foreigners', and by them falsities themselves are meant, as in Lamentations,

O Jehovah, look upon our shame. Our inheritance has been turned over to foreigners, and our houses to the foreign-born. Lamentations 5:1-2.

In Obadiah,

Foreigners led his strength ³ captive, and the foreign-born entered his gates and cast ⁴ lots for Jerusalem. Obad. verse 11.

'Casting lots for Jerusalem' stands for destroying the Church and scattering its truths.

[15] In Zephaniah,

I will punish ⁵ the princes and the king's sons, and all clothed with the clothing of him who is foreign-born. Zephaniah 1:8.

Those 'clothed with the clothing of him who is foreign-born' stand for people subject to falsities; for 'the princes' and 'the king's sons' who are to undergo punishment mean leading truths and in the contrary sense leading falsities. For this meaning of 'princes', see 1482, 2089, 5044, and for that of 'kings' as truths themselves and in the contrary sense falsities themselves, 2015, 2069, 3009, 4581, 4966, 5044, 5068, 6148, so that 'the king's sons' means things derived from those truths or falsities.

[16] In David,

Deliver me, and rescue me from the hands of the sons of him who is foreign-born, whose mouths speak vanity, and whose right hands are the right hands of falsehood. Psalms 144:7-8, 11.

'The sons of him who is foreign-born', it is plainly evident, means those subject to falsities, and so means falsities themselves, for it says, 'Whose mouths speak vanity, and whose right hands are right hands of falsehood', 'vanity' meaning false ideas composing doctrine, and 'falsehood' false ways of life, 9248.

Abyste mohli dál prohlížet obsah při poslouchání nahrávky, pusťte si audio nahrávku novém okně

There’s a saying, “If you want a happy ending, that depends, of course, on where you stop your story.” (Orson Welles).

In part two of this series, we read about Gideon’s miraculous rout of the Midianites. With just 300 men he took on an enemy force of 145,000 and won. We often stop the story there and get our happy ending. But, in the Bible, that’s not where the story of Gideon ends. It carries on, and there’s not such a happy ending. It seems important to look at this and talk about what it means for our efforts at spiritual growth, because if we just read the success stories in the Bible we might get a rather skewed picture of what to expect in our lives.

There are two main sections of this part of the story:

1) Finishing off the Midianites (and dealing with some Israelites along the way), and

2) what happened after the battle.

The first thing that happens in this chapter is that the men of the tribe of Ephraim are angry at Gideon for not involving them in the battle from the beginning. They say, “What is this thing you have done to us by not calling us when you went to fight against the Midianites?” (Judges 8:1). Nothing has been done to them. It’s wasn't about them; it was about beating the enemy, not who about who got to do the beating.

Nonetheless, for the men of Ephraim it really seems to matter who did it. A few chapters later in the Book of Judges, they complain to another judge who just led Israelites to another great victory. They say, “Why did you go to fight the Ammonites without calling us to go with you? We’re going to burn down your house over your head” (Judges 12:1). And in that case they fight against the judge - and the judge wins and kills 42,000 of them.

The teachings of the New Church say that Ephraim represents intelligence (Secrets of Heaven 264). And when intelligence is called in from the mountains to help, by Gideon and the 300 who lapped, it’s a powerful ally. Similarly, when we have a humble desire to seek what the Lord says, then it can be really powerful to use our minds to their full extent and think through all of the ramifications of the truth which helps with capturing the selfishness that might be trying to get away. But, when they’re just the men of Ephraim on their own, they seem to represent intelligence that has a lot of pride in its own power. Watch out for the pride of Ephraim in yourself after you make some progress in your spiritual life — it might just want to destroy the humble desire to learn and follow the truth — the very thing that actually gave you victory in the first place.

Gideon and his men now carry on chasing the Midianites, trying to capture their kings, Zebah and Zalmunnah. They cross the Jordan river and come to Succoth and Penuel - two border towns near the edge of the land of Canaan.

Chasing the Midianites into this region seems to represent really trying to drive the selfish love of pleasure for its own sake (which is what is represented by Midian) right the way out of our lives — even out of our more external thoughts and habits.

Here they encounter resistance. They’re exhausted and they ask for bread to sustain them and the people of Succoth and Penuel mock them, saying, “Oh, so we should give you bread because you’re just about to capture Zebah and Zalmunnah? Right… No — not going to happen.” It’s a picture of cynicism. They’ve got elders and princes - people who’ve been around the block a few times, and a tower with well-established defenses.

There’s part of us that doesn’t believe that we can actually change our external behaviour too. But, “Jehovah said to Gideon, ‘By the three hundred men who lapped I will save you, and give the Midianites into your hand’” (Judges 7:7). They were going to capture the Midianites because Jehovah said so and they didn’t have to have any bread from Succoth and Penuel to do so.

Gideon and his men go on, attack the camp of the Midianites, “while the camp felt secure” (8:11) and capture the kings. Then they go back to Succoth and Penuel, and Gideon does something that to us seems totally brutal and unnecessary: “And he took the elders of the city, and thorns of the wilderness and briers, and with them he made the men of Succoth know. Then he tore down the tower of Penuel and killed the men of the city” (8:16-17).

I think that spiritually this is a picture of actually bringing order to our external life. The power of eagerness for the truth can tear down our cynicism. Using thorns and briers to make “the men of Succoth know” sounds like an echo of the many other times in the Word where Jehovah says, “…and then they shall know that I am Jehovah.” Jehovah is the one with the power, in case that wasn’t already clear.

Once Gideon is done with Succoth and Penuel, he deals with the kings of Midian. As we work on fighting against an evil in our lives, we gradually see more and more of what it has done to us. Gideon talks with them and this is the first time we hear that they had killed Gideon’s brothers. In the Word brothers are a symbol of charity—of love for our fellow man. How many times have we been given an opportunity to help someone and we’ve decided to do something fun instead? And so they need to be killed.

Gideon’s son, Jether, can’t do it—he’s too young— and our younger self can’t quite bring itself to really make an end to the love of pleasure for its own sake. Gideon can, though. His name means hewer or chopper.

In the positive sense this is him living out his potential—chasing the Midianites down and cutting them down. And because of this, a little further on, it says, “Thus Midian was subdued before the children of Israel, so that they lifted their heads no more. And the country was quiet for forty years in the days of Gideon” (Judges 8:28).

Can’t we stop the story there? We have to look at what happened after the battle.

After the Battle They Want Gideon to Rule Over Them

Remind me, who was it that won the battle? Jehovah, using Gideon and the 300 men who lapped. Without Jehovah, Gideon would still be cowering in a winepress somewhere while the Midianites overran the land. Jehovah didn’t need the 32 thousand men. He didn’t need the 10 thousand men. He needed 300 that were eager to follow Him, to listen to Him, to lap up His teachings.

Jehovah in Hebrew means the One who Is. The teachings of the New Church explain the meaning of this name of God in this way (from Secrets of Heaven 1735, from John Elliot's translation):

"Jehovah… [is] Love itself, to which no other attributes are appropriate than those of pure Love and so of pure Mercy towards the whole human race, that Mercy being such that it wills to save all people, to make them eternally happy, and to impart to them all that is its Own—thus out of pure Mercy and by the mighty power of love to draw towards heaven… all who are willing to follow. That Love itself is Jehovah…."

The Lord’s pure love is what won the battle for Gideon, what wins the battle against selfishness in us. It’s the driving force, the motivation, the strength, the endurance. If we didn’t have love from the Lord to want to be a good person, to care about other people, to live for something more than ourselves, we would still be nowhere, having done nothing.

But the people want Gideon to rule over them. And then his son. And then his son’s son. And on forever. Really, Gideon without Jehovah is not something you want to rule over you. To take Gideon and his line of sons after him and ask that to rule over you is to take one thread of the truth and make it everything. A hewing and chopping approach is good for some things, like getting rid of Midianites, but it's not good for everything, especially once it’s been separated from Jehovah.

A branch that abide in the vine bears much fruit but if a branch stops abiding in the vine—no matter how much fruit it bore in the past—it’s going to wither and die because there’s no life in it (John 15:4-6). The people want Gideon to be king because it looks like he’s the one who gave them victory. It looks like what made us successful was a certain approach that we took that worked in that circumstance. Our lazy selves like simple—we like one size fits all solutions.

But that is not the kind of solution that the Word provides. The Word of God is frustratingly complex at times. In one place it says, “Beat your ploughshares into swords….” (Joel 3:10). And we say, “Got it! Take the fighting approach!” But, in other places it talks about people beating their swords into ploughshares (Isaiah 2:4 ; Micah 4:3 ).

It can be hard to keep going back to the Word with eagerness to learn what it has to say. It takes patience. It take intellectual humility to say, “I don’t get it.” It takes a willingness to hear something different than what we might want to hear. When we don’t want to do that work we want Gideon rule over us instead of Jehovah and he makes us an ephod to worship.

Gideon Makes an Ephod

Gideon requests that the people give him the golden earrings from their plunder and he makes some sort of golden ephod out of it. An ephod is a priestly apron and, functionally, in the Bible they were used to get answers from God (1 Samuel 23:9-13; 30:7-8). They are symbolic of the literal sense of the Word where we get answers from God. Gideon's making an ephod for himself means giving people a substitute for the Word to get answers from. This is when we feel like we’ve had some success in becoming a spiritual person and we feel like we’ve got a good enough grasp of the Bible that we don’t actually have to read it.

To get a feel for what this looks like in real life I want to read you something from a fascinating book called Stages of Faith by James W. Fowler in which the author attempts to describe 6 different stages of development that a person’s faith can go through. Here are a few quotes from one of the many interviews that Fowler had conducted as part of his research. This an interview with a teenage girl about her faith that Fowler says is typical of Stage 3—Synthetic-Conventional Faith:

“I feel like I’m not afraid of anything now because I know what I believe in and I know what I want to do in life, and nothing could really set me off course. …. Before, if we moved… I got into people, different people, and I sort of changed as the people went. But I have learned that just the best thing is to be yourself” (p155).

When asked what she thinks God is she says, “God is different to a lot of people….I don’t go exactly by the Bible. I think you should try to make… people happy and at the same time enjoy yourself, you know? In a good kind way….” (pp155-156).

When asked what she thinks will happen to her when she dies she says, “I have this feeling, like, when I die I’m going to go to heaven because I’ve tried on earth to be good to people and I believe in God and I’m a follower” (p156).

When asked what it means to go to heaven she said, “I guess I’ll find out sometime. But, see, I don’t want to ask too many questions like that. …. I never wanted to go that much into it. I just want to do what the Bible says” (p157).

She knows what she believes and that she’s going to heaven and she just wants to do what the Bible says but she also doesn’t “go exactly go by the Bible” or want to really go that much into it. She’s got her ephod - her version of the truth which is “the best thing is to be yourself” and “try to make people happy and at the same time enjoy yourself… In a good kind way.”

That’s pretty much what the Bible says, right? The point of this is not to make fun of this teenage girl but to recognise this exact same tendency in ourselves. Beating the Midianites only gets us this far - that is, not very far at all in the big scheme of things. What about the Philistines, and the Assyrians, and the Babylonians all still to come?

The teachings of the New Church say:

If after temptation a person does not believe that the Lord alone has fought for him and brought him victory, the temptation he has undergone is merely external. Such temptation does not extend into him deeply or cause anything of faith and charity to take root. (Secrets of Heaven 8969)

At this stage, while we think we’re worshipping God, we will also be playing the harlot with this idol at the same time. And it can be a snare to us, just like it was to Gideon and his house. During Gideon’s life, “the country was quiet for forty years” (Judges 8:28) and it sounds like the people were at least still worshipping Jehovah alongside of this ephod. But, we read, “So it was, as soon as Gideon was dead, that the children of Israel turned back and again played the harlot with the Baals, and made Baal-Berith their god” (Judges 8:33).

Worshipping the Baals was the real problem in the first place. If the children of Israel had been worshipping Jehovah, the Midianites never would have been a threat. It was because they were worshipping the Baals that they were vulnerable to attack. The problem with this ephod version of the Word of God is that it can be a stepping stone right back to worshipping Baal again. And worshipping Baal is not just loving pleasure above all else: it’s “worship from the evils of the love of self and of the world” (Apocalypse Explained 160:2). It’s embracing hell, while still thinking that we’re somehow God’s chosen people.

The particular Baal that they made their god was Baal-Berith which means “lord of the covenant.” The covenant was meant to be an agreement between Jehovah and His people that they would follow His commandments and He would bless them. To worship a Baal of the covenant would seem to be a corruption of that idea - to make God and His covenant with us into our own image. To say, “I’m a good Christian and that means that I can live however I want and God is going to look after me and give me whatever I want.”

If we stop the story here with Gideon’s death and the people’s return to idolatry, it’s a pretty depressing picture. But, of course, the bigger story doesn’t stop here, there are more judges to come - more amazing victories over seemingly overwhelming odds and, too, more terrible decisions by the people who are supposed to be following Jehovah.

But the story doesn’t stop with the judges—there are the stories of the kings, good and bad, and prophets, and eventually the story of Jesus Christ and His life and death and resurrection and eventually Him calling us to be with Him in the Holy City New Jerusalem.

As we look across that whole storyline, with a willingness to acknowledge the defeats as well as the victories, one message that seems to come through is, “Don’t stop your story where you are.” Don’t think that you’re done. Keep striving to worship only Jesus Christ (who is Jehovah come down into this world to save us). Remember that is the Lord’s love—and only the Lord’s love—that will give you victory over your enemies. Remember that the Lord will save you, by the 300 men who lapped. Ignore the pride of Ephraim that wants you to think the power is in your intelligence. Destroy the cynicism of Succoth and Penuel who don’t believe change is possible. And keep going back with urgency to the Lord in His Word—stay thirsty for the truth, eager to learn, willing to follow and the Lord will give you victory and keep leading you towards a happy end.

(Odkazy: Arcana Coelestia 3021 [1-8])