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Ezekiel 20:1

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1 And it came to pass in the seventh year, in the fifth month, the tenth day of the month, that certain of the elders of Israel came to inquire of the LORD, and sat before me.

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Korah

  

Korah was a man of the tribe of Levi, who together with Dathan and Abiram, led an insurrection against Moses and Aaron. Apparently their insurrection was prompted by their being out in the wilderness with no place to go. This happened after the Children of Israel had approached the land of Canaan from the south and had sent out spies to scout the land. Ten of the twelve spies said the land was too strong for them, that there were giants there. Moses then told the whole congregation they would all have to spend forty years in the wilderness until all that generation had died. In this story, Moses and Aaron represent the Lord. When Korah and his fellow rebels murmured against them and took fire from the altar and burned incense with it, they represented the profanation of mixing what is good (the fire from the altar) with what is evil (rebelling against Moses). The three rebel leaders and their followers were separated from the congregation and were swallowed up by a pit that opened in the earth. In our lives, evils need to be separated, too, and gotten rid of.

(Odkazy: The Apocalypse Explained 324 [6])

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True Christianity # 467

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467. In the Word the Garden of Eden does not mean some garden but a state of understanding; and a tree does not mean some tree but a human being. You can see that the Garden of Eden means understanding and wisdom from the following passages: "With your understanding and wisdom you had made wealth for yourself"; and in the following verses there: "Full of wisdom, you were in Eden, the garden of God. Every precious stone was your covering" (Ezekiel 28:4, 12-13). These things are said of the prince and of the king of Tyre. The king is said to possess wisdom because Tyre in the Word means the church's concepts of truth and goodness, which lead to wisdom. The precious stones that cover him also mean these concepts of truth and goodness. The prince and the king of Tyre were not in the Garden of Eden.

[2] Elsewhere in Ezekiel: "Assyria was a cedar in Lebanon. The cedars in the garden of God could not hide it. No tree in the garden of God was equal to it in beauty. All the trees of Eden in the garden of God were jealous of it" (Ezekiel 31:3, 8-9). And again: "To which among the trees of Eden did you become comparable in glory and size?" (Ezekiel 31:18). This is said of Assyria, because in the Word Assyria means rationality and understanding.

[3] In Isaiah: "Jehovah will comfort Zion and turn her wilderness into Eden, and her desert into the garden of Jehovah" (Isaiah 51:3). Zion here means the church; Eden and the garden of Jehovah mean wisdom and understanding. In the Book of Revelation: "To those who overcome I will give [food] to eat from the tree of life, which is in the middle of the paradise of God" (Revelation 2:7). "In the middle of the street [and] of the river, on this side and that, will be the tree of life" (Revelation 22:2).

[4] From these verses it is very clear that the garden in Eden in which Adam was placed means understanding and wisdom, because similar things are said about Tyre, Assyria, and Zion.

Elsewhere in the Word as well, a garden means understanding; for example, in Isaiah 58:11; 61:11; Jeremiah 31:12; Amos 9:14; Numbers 24:6. A garden has this spiritual meaning because of symbolic representations in the spiritual world. In that world, garden paradises appear wherever there are angels who have understanding and wisdom; the understanding and wisdom they have from the Lord causes such things to appear around them. This occurs because of correspondence, for all things that exist in the spiritual world are correspondences.

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