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1 Mosebok 4

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1 Og Adam holdt sig til sin hustru Eva, og hun blev fruktsommelig og fødte Kain; da sa hun: Jeg har fått en mann ved Herren.

2 Siden fødte hun Abel, hans bror. Og Abel blev fårehyrde, men Kain blev jorddyrker.

3 Da nogen tid var gått, hendte det at Kain bar frem for Herren et offer av jordens grøde.

4 Og Abel bar også frem et offer, som han tok av de førstefødte lam i sin hjord og deres fett; og Herren så til Abel og hans offer,

5 men til Kain og hans offer så han ikke. Da blev Kain meget vred, og han stirret ned for sig.

6 Og Herren sa til Kain: Hvorfor er du vred, og hvorfor stirrer du ned for dig?

7 Er det ikke så at dersom du har godt i sinne, da kan du løfte op ditt ansikt? Men har du ikke godt i sinne, da ligger synden på lur ved døren, og dens attrå står til dig, men du skal være herre over den.

8 Og Kain talte til Abel, sin bror. Og da de engang var ute på marken, for Kain løs på Abel, sin bror, og slo ham ihjel.

9 Da sa Herren til Kain: Hvor er Abel, din bror? Han svarte: Jeg vet ikke; skal jeg passe på min bror?

10 Men han sa: Hvad har du gjort? Hør, din brors blod roper til mig fra jorden.

11 Og nu skal du være bannlyst fra den jord som lot op sin munn og tok imot din brors blod av din hånd!

12 Når du dyrker jorden, skal den ikke mere gi dig sin grøde; omflakkende og hjemløs skal du være på jorden.

13 Da sa Kain til Herren: Min misgjerning er større enn at jeg kan bære den.

14 Se, du har idag drevet mig ut av landet, og jeg må skjule mig for ditt åsyn; og jeg vil bli omflakkende og hjemløs på jorden, og det vil gå så at hver den som finner mig, slår mig ihjel.

15 Men Herren sa til ham: Nei! for slår nogen Kain ihjel, skal han lide syvfold hevn. Og Herren gav Kain et merke, forat ikke nogen som møtte ham, skulde slå ham ihjel.

16 Så gikk Kain bort fra Herrens åsyn og bosatte sig i landet Nod*, østenfor Eden. / {* d.e. landflyktighet.}

17 Og Kain holdt sig til sin hustru, og hun blev fruktsommelig og fødte Hanok; og han tok sig for å bygge en by og kalte byen Hanok efter sin sønn.

18 Og Hanok fikk sønnen Irad, og Irad blev far til Mehujael, og Mehujael blev far til Metusael, og Metusael blev far til Lamek.

19 Og Lamek tok sig to hustruer; den ene hette Ada, og den andre hette Silla.

20 Og Ada fødte Jabal; han blev stamfar til dem som bor i telt og holder buskap.

21 Og hans bror hette Jubal; han blev stamfar til alle dem som spiller på harpe og fløite.

22 Og Silla fødte Tubalkain; han smidde alle slags skarpe redskaper av kobber og jern; og Tubalkains søster var Na'ama.

23 Og Lamek sa til sine hustruer: Ada og Silla, hør mine ord, Lameks hustruer, merk min tale! En mann dreper jeg for hvert sår jeg får, og en gutt for hver skramme jeg får;

24 for hevnes Kain syv ganger, da skal Lamek hevnes syv og sytti ganger.

25 Og Adam holdt sig atter til sin hustru, og hun fødte en sønn og kalte ham Set*; for [sa hun] Gud har satt mig en annen sønn i Abels sted, fordi Kain slo ham ihjel. / {* d.e. satt i en annens sted.}

26 Og Set fikk en sønn og kalte ham Enos. På den tid begynte de å påkalle Herrens navn.

   

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Divine Providence # 310

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310. 1. What our own prudence is and what the prudence is that is not our own. People are devoted to their own prudence when they convince themselves that the way things seem is the way they really are, and particularly when they accept as truth the appearance that their own prudence is everything and that divine providence is nothing but a generality; though as already explained [201], no such generality could exist without being made up of specifics. They are then caught up in illusions as well, since any appearance that we take to be truth becomes an illusion. Further, to the extent that they justify themselves with illusions, they become materialists to the point that eventually they believe only what they can apprehend with one of their physical senses. They rely primarily on sight because it especially interacts with our thinking. Ultimately they become sense-centered; and if they come down decisively in favor of the material world and against God, they close off the inner levels of their minds and put a kind of veil in the way. From then on, they think underneath this veil, as though nothing above it existed. The ancients called sense-centered people like this "serpents of the tree of knowledge." In the spiritual world they say that as they become fixed in their opinions, people like this close the deeper levels of their minds all the way to the nose. The nose means our sense of what is true, and that sense is lacking.

Now I need to describe what these people are like.

[2] They are exceptionally adroit and shrewd, ingenious debaters. They call their ingenuity and shrewdness intelligence and wisdom and see no evidence to the contrary. They look on people who differ from them as simple and stupid, especially if those people revere God and acknowledge divine providence. In the deeper principles of their minds--which they themselves know very little about--they are like the people called Machiavellians, people who trivialize murder, adultery, theft, and perjury as such. If they do argue against such crimes, it is only to be careful that their actual nature does not become obvious.

[3] As far as our life in this world is concerned, the thought that it might be different from that of animals never crosses their minds. They think of our life after death as a kind of living mist that rises up out of the corpse or the tomb and then sinks back down and dies. This insanity leads to the belief that spirits and angels are made of air. Any of these materialists who are obliged to believe in eternal life believe that this is what our souls are like. This means that our souls do not see, hear, or speak, that they are blind, deaf, and mute. All they do is think in their own bit of air. "How could the soul be anything more?" materialists ask. "Aren't the outer senses dead along with the body? We won't get them back until our souls are reunited with our bodies." They cling to these conclusions because they can think about the state of the soul after death only in physical terms, not in spiritual terms. Without their physical concepts they would have lost their belief in eternal life.

They particularly justify their own self-love, calling it the fire of life and the spur to the various useful activities in the state. This makes them their own idols; and their thoughts, being illusions based on illusions, are false images. Since they approve of the pleasures of their obsessions, they are satans and devils. We call them satans because they inwardly justify their obsessions with evil, and devils because they act them out.

[4] I have also been shown what the shrewdest sense-centered people are like. Their hell is deep down at the back, and they want to be unnoticed. So it looks as though they are flying around like ghosts (which are their hallucinations). They are called demons. Once some of them were let out of hell so that I could find out what they are like. They promptly attached themselves to my neck just below the base of my skull and from there moved into my feelings. They did not want to enter my thoughts, and adroitly evaded them. They altered my feelings one at a time, shifting my mood imperceptibly to its opposite, into obsessions with evil; and since they were not touching my thoughts at all, they would have distorted and inverted them without my noticing it if the Lord had not prevented it.

[5] That is what becomes of people who in this world do not believe there is any divine providence, and who pay close attention to others only to find out what their urges and desires are and in this way influence them until they have complete control over them. Since they do this so subtly and shrewdly that others are not aware of it, and since they keep the same nature after death, as soon as they arrive in the spiritual world they are dismissed into this hell. In heaven's light they seem to have no noses, and strange as it may seem, even though they are so shrewd, they are still more sense-centered and superficial than anyone else.

It is because the ancients called sense-centered people "serpents" and because people like this are more deft, shrewd, and clever at debating than others that it says, "The serpent was made shrewd beyond every beast of the field" (Genesis 3:1) and, "The Lord said, 'Be prudent as serpents and simple as doves'" (Matthew 10:16). So too the dragon, who is also called the old serpent, the devil, and satan [Revelation 20:2], is described as "having seven heads and ten crowns, and on the heads seven diadems" (Revelation 12:3, 9). The seven heads mean shrewdness, the ten horns the power of persuasion by distortions, and the seven diadems the holy values of the Word and the Church profaned.

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