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Ezekiel 41

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1 Afterward he brought me to the temple, and measured the posts, six cubits broad on the one side, and six cubits broad on the other side, which was the breadth of the tabernacle.

2 And the breadth of the door was ten cubits; and the sides of the door were five cubits on the one side, and five cubits on the other side: and he measured the length of it forty cubits: and the breadth, twenty cubits.

3 Then he went inward, and measured the post of the door, two cubits; and the door, six cubits; and the breadth of the door, seven cubits.

4 So he measured the length of it twenty cubits; and the breadth, twenty cubits, before the temple: and he said to me, This is the most holy place.

5 Afterward he measured the wall of the house, six cubits; and the breadth of every side-chamber, four cubits, round the house on every side.

6 And the side-chambers were three, one over another, and thirty in order; and they entered into the wall which was of the house for the side-chambers around, that they might have hold, but they had not hold in the wall of the house.

7 And there was an enlarging, and a winding about still upward to the side-chambers: for the winding about of the house went still upward around the house; therefore the breadth of the house was still upward, and so increased from the lowest chamber to the highest by the midst.

8 I saw also the hight of the house around: the foundations of the side-chambers were a full reed of six great cubits.

9 The thickness of the wall, which was for the side-chamber without, was five cubits: and that which was left was the place of the side-chambers that were within.

10 And between the chambers was the width of twenty cubits around the house on every side.

11 And the doors of the side-chambers were towards the place that was left, one door towards the north, and another door towards the south: and the breadth of the place that was left was five cubits around.

12 Now the building that was before the separate place at the end towards the west was seventy cubits broad; and the wall of the building was five cubits thick around, and its length ninety cubits.

13 So he measured the house, a hundred cubits long; and the separate place, and the building, with its walls, a hundred cubits long;

14 Also the breadth of the face of the house, and of the separate place towards the east, a hundred cubits.

15 And he measured the length of the building over against the separate place which was behind it, and its galleries on the one side and on the other side, a hundred cubits, with the inner temple, and the porches of the court;

16 The door posts, and the narrow windows, and the galleries around on their three stories, over against the door, ceiled with wood around, and from the ground up to the windows, and the windows were covered;

17 To that above the door, even to the inner house, and without, and by all the wall around within and without, by measure.

18 And it was made with cherubim and palm-trees, so that a palm-tree was between a cherub and a cherub; and every cherub had two faces;

19 So that the face of a man was towards the palm-tree on the one side, and the face of a young lion towards the palm-tree on the other side: it was made through all the house around.

20 From the ground to above the door were cherubim and palm-trees made, and on the wall of the temple.

21 The posts of the temple were squared, and the face of the sanctuary; the appearance of the one as the appearance of the other.

22 The altar of wood was three cubits high, and its length two cubits; and its corners, and its length, and its walls, were of wood: and he said to me, This is the table that is before the LORD.

23 And the temple and the sanctuary had two doors.

24 And the doors had two leaves each, two turning leaves; two leaves for the one door, and two leaves for the other door.

25 And there were made on them, on the doors of the temple, cherubim and palm-trees, as were made upon the walls; and there were thick planks upon the face of the porch without.

26 And there were narrow windows and palm-trees on the one side and on the other side, on the sides of the porch, and upon the side-chambers of the house, and thick planks.

   

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Ezekiel 40:16

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16 And there were narrow windows to the little chambers, and to their posts within the gate around, and likewise to the arches: and windows were around inward: and upon each post were palm-trees.

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Arcana Coelestia # 4462

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4462. 'To give our sister to a man who has a foreskin' means unless they could identify the truth and the good of the Church with representatives and disregard the spiritual entities meant by these. This is clear from the meaning of 'the foreskin' as an external representative - as the sign that they were members of the Church. It was usual therefore to speak of circumcision and the foreskin when they needed to distinguish between those who belonged to the Church and those who did not. For circumcision meant the departure from filthy loves, namely self-love and love of the world, and the acceptance of heavenly loves, which are love to the Lord and love towards the neighbour, and so an acceptance of the Church. This is why these words mean an acceptance of their semblance of religion and that therefore they identified the truth and the good of the Church with representatives, disregarding the internal things meant by these. For otherwise they would not be like them, as the words that follow show, 'Only on this [condition] will we consent to you: If you will be as we are'. As regards 'circumcision' being the sign of purification from filthy loves, see 2039, 2632, and the expression 'uncircumcised' being used of those who were governed by those loves, 2049, 3412, 3413.

[2] Scarcely anyone at the present day knows what circumcision means specifically, and this therefore must be stated. The genital organs in both sexes mean things associated with the joining together of good and truth. They not only mean them but also in actual fact correspond to them. It has been shown at the ends of chapters that all the organs and members in the human being have a correspondence with spiritual things in heaven, including therefore the organs and members devoted to procreation. These correspond to the marriage of good and truth, from which marriage conjugial love also comes down, see 2618, 2727-2729, 2803, 3132, 4434. Because the foreskin covered the genital organ it corresponded in the Most Ancient Church to the obscuration of good and truth, but in the Ancient Church to the defilement of them. With a person who belonged to the Most Ancient Church, because he was an internal man, good and truth were able to be obscured but not defiled, but with one who belonged to the Ancient Church, because he was in comparison with his predecessor an external man, good and truth were able to be defiled since it is external things, that is to say, external loves, that cause defilement. For this reason those who belonged to the Most Ancient Church had no knowledge of circumcision, only those who belonged to the Ancient Church had it.

[3] In addition circumcision spread from this Church to many nations. It was imposed on Abraham and his descendants not as something new but as the revival of a practice which had been abandoned, it becoming for his descendants the sign that they belonged to the Church. But that nation did not know, and did not wish to know, what it was a sign of, for they identified religion with representatives alone, which are externals. They therefore condemned the uncircumcised as a whole, when yet circumcision was to be merely a sign representative of purification from self-love and love of the world, from which those are purified who have been circumcised spiritually and are called circumcised at heart, as in Moses,

Jehovah God will circumcise your heart, and the heart of your seed, so that you will love Jehovah your God with all your heart and with all your soul. Deuteronomy 30:6.

In the same author,

You shall circumcise the foreskin of your heart, and you shall be stiff-necked no longer. Deuteronomy 10:16, 18.

And in Jeremiah,

Break up your fallow ground, and remove the foreskin of your heart. Jeremiah 4:3-4.

[4] People however who are governed by self-love and love of the world are called 'uncircumcised', in spite of their having been circumcised, as in Jeremiah,

Behold, the days are coming in which I will visit every one circumcised in the foreskin - Egypt, and Judah, and Edom, and the children of Ammon, and Moab, and all that have the corners [of their hair] cut and who dwell in the wilderness, for all these nations are uncircumcised, and all the house of Israel is uncircumcised in heart. Jeremiah 9:25-26.

From this it is also evident that many other nations were circumcised, for it is said 'I will visit every one circumcised in the foreskin', and so, as stated above, that circumcision was not something new, nor was it confined to the descendants of Jacob as a distinguishing feature. The Philistines were not circumcised, and therefore 'the uncircumcised' is generally used to mean the Philistines, 1 Samuel 14:6; 17:26, 36; 31:4; 2 Samuel 1:20; and elsewhere.

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