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Exodus 34

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1 And the LORD said to Moses, Hew thee two tables of stone like the first; and I will write upon these tables the words that were in the first tables which thou didst break.

2 And be ready in the morning, and come up in the morning to mount Sinai, and present thyself there to me on the top of the mount.

3 And no man shall come up with thee, neither let any man be seen throughout all the mount: neither let the flocks nor herds feed before that mount.

4 And he hewed two tables of stone, like the first; and Moses rose up early in the morning, and went up to mount Sinai, as the LORD had commanded him, and took in his hand the two tables of stone.

5 And the LORD descended in the cloud, and stood with him there, and proclaimed the name of the LORD.

6 And the LORD passed by before him, and proclaimed, the LORD, the LORD God, merciful and gracious, long-suffering, and abundant in goodness and truth.

7 Keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, and that will by no means clear the guilty; visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, and upon the children's children, to the third and to the fourth generation.

8 And Moses made haste, and bowed his head towards the earth, and worshiped.

9 And he said, If now I have found grace in thy sight, O Lord, let my Lord, I pray thee, go among us (for it is a stiff-necked people) and pardon our iniquity and our sin, and take us for thy inheritance.

10 And he said, Behold, I make a covenant: before all thy people I will do wonders, such as have not been done in all the earth, nor in any nation: and all the people among which thou art, shall see the work of the LORD: for it is a terrible thing that I will do with thee.

11 Observe thou that which I command thee this day: Behold, I drive out before thee the Amorite, and the Canaanite, and the Hittite, and the Perizzite, and the Hivite, and the Jebusite.

12 Take heed to thyself, lest thou make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land whither thou goest, lest it be for a snare in the midst of thee:

13 But ye shall destroy their altars, break their images, and cut down their groves.

14 For thou shalt worship no other god: for the LORD, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God:

15 Lest thou make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land, and they go astray after their gods, and do sacrifice to their gods, and one call thee, and thou eat of his sacrifice;

16 And thou take of their daughters to thy sons, and their daughters go astray after their gods, and make thy sons go astray after their gods.

17 Thou shalt make thee no molten gods.

18 The feast of unleavened bread shalt thou keep. Seven days shalt thou eat unleavened bread, as I commanded thee, in the time of the month Abib: for in the month Abib thou camest out of from Egypt.

19 Every first-born is mine: and every firstling among thy cattle, whether ox or sheep, that is male.

20 But the firstling of an ass thou shalt redeem with a lamb: and if thou shalt not redeem him, then shalt thou break his neck. All the first-born of thy sons thou shalt redeem. And none shall appear before me empty.

21 Six days thou shalt work, but on the seventh day thou shalt rest: in time of plowing and in harvest thou shalt rest.

22 And thou shalt observe the feast of weeks, of the first-fruits of wheat-harvest, and the feast of in-gathering at the year's end.

23 Thrice in the year shall all your male children appear before the Lord GOD, the GOD of Israel.

24 For I will drive out the nations before thee, and enlarge thy borders: neither shall any man desire thy land, when thou shalt go up to appear before the LORD thy God, thrice in the year.

25 Thou shalt not offer the blood of my sacrifice with leaven, neither shall the sacrifice of the feast of the passover be left until the morning.

26 The first of the first-fruits of thy land thou shalt bring to the house of the LORD thy God. Thou shalt not seethe a kid in his mother's milk.

27 And the LORD said to Moses, Write thou these words: for after the tenor of these words I have made a covenant with thee, and with Israel.

28 And he was there with the LORD forty days and forty nights; he neither ate bread nor drank water: and he wrote upon the tables the words of the covenant, the ten commandments.

29 And it came to pass when Moses came down from mount Sinai (with the two tables of testimony in Moses's hand, when he came down from the mount) that Moses knew not that the skin of his face shone, while he talked with him.

30 And when Aaron and all the children of Israel saw Moses, behold, the skin of his face shone, and they were afraid to come nigh him.

31 And Moses called to them; and Aaron and all the rulers of the congregation returned to him; and Moses talked with them.

32 And afterward all the children of Israel came nigh: and he gave them in commandment all that the LORD had spoken with him in mount Sinai.

33 And till Moses had done speaking with them, he put a vail on his face.

34 But when Moses went in before the LORD to speak with him, he took the vail off, until he came out. And he came out and spoke to the children of Israel that which he was commanded.

35 And the children of Israel saw the face of Moses, that the skin of Moses's face shone: and Moses put the vail upon his face again, until he went in to speak with him.

   

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Arcana Coelestia # 10642

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10642. 'Therefore you shall overthrow their altars' means that the evil involved in that type of religion and in the worship springing from it is to be rejected. This is clear from the meaning of 'altar' as the chief representative of the Lord and of worship of Him which springs from good, dealt with in 921, 2777, 2811, 4541, 8935, 8940, 9388, 9389, 9714, 9964, 10242, 10245, and therefore in the contrary sense as that which is representative of idolatrous worship, thus worship springing from evil, dealt with below; and from the meaning of 'overthrowing' as rejecting. For of altars it is said that they are to be overthrown, but of evils involved in worship, meant by the altars of the nations, it is said that they are to be rejected.

[2] In this verse altars, pillars, and groves are mentioned, and in general they mean everything connected with idolatrous worship, worship that springs from evil being meant by 'altars', worship that springs from the falsity of evil by 'pillars', and religious teachings that go with them by 'groves'. The reason why they were to be completely banished was that those representative objects were not used to worship the Lord but to worship gods, such as the baals and many others, who had once been ordinary human beings. This worship was devilish and hellish, because worshipping human beings instead of God Himself, who is the Lord, is devilish; for a person is linked to whomever he worships.

[3] The situation is this: If a person is worshipped as a god, anyone who comes from hell is linked to him. This is because belief and love create a link; that is, a belief in what is true and a love of what is good link a person to the Lord, but a belief in what is false and a love of what is evil link a person to hell. For everyone has spirits from hell and angels from heaven present with him; without their presence the person could not live. If someone who was once a human being in the world is worshipped by a person the spirits from hell with that person think that they are the ones who are being worshipped (for everyone in hell wishes to be a god), and these spirits transmit that worship to the hellish community they belong to. To the extent therefore that these are worshipped the angels from heaven depart. As a consequence the person is drawn away into hellish desires, till at length, so far as all the life within him is concerned, he becomes like those spirits; and after death he also comes to be one of them. But when the Lord, who is the God of heaven and earth, is worshipped by a person the angels from heaven who are present with that person arrogate none of his worship to themselves, because they ascribe all the truth that people believe and all the good that they love to the Lord, and none to themselves. Through them consequently the way right through to the Lord Himself is laid open, and He then joins them to Himself in faith and love. From all this it may be recognized how extremely important it is to worship the Lord Himself, who has all power in heaven and on earth, as He Himself declares in Matthew 28:18.

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