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Genesis 15

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1 After these things the word of the LORD came to Abram in a vision, saying, Fear not, Abram: I am thy shield, and thy exceeding great reward.

2 And Abram said, Lord GOD, what wilt thou give me, seeing I go childless, and the steward of my house is this Eliezer of Damascus?

3 And Abram said, Behold, to me thou hast given no seed: and lo, one born in my house is my heir.

4 And behold, the word of the LORD came to him, saying, This shall not be thy heir; but he that shall come forth out of thy own bowels shall be thy heir.

5 And he brought him forth abroad, and said, Look now towards heaven, and tell the stars, if thou art able to number them: and he said to him, So shall thy seed be.

6 And he believed in the LORD; and he counted it to him for righteousness.

7 And he said to him, I am the LORD that brought thee out of Ur of the Chaldees, to give thee this land to inherit it.

8 And he said, Lord GOD, by what shall I know that I shall inherit it?

9 And he said to him, Take me a heifer of three years old, and a she-goat of three years old, and a ram of three years old, and a turtle-dove, and a young pigeon.

10 And he took to him all these, and divided them in the midst, and laid each piece one against another: but the birds he did not divide.

11 And when the fowls came down upon the carcases, Abram drove them away.

12 And when the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell upon Abram; and lo, a horror of great darkness fell upon him.

13 And he said to Abram, Know certainly that thy seed shall be a stranger in a land that is not theirs, and shall serve them; and they shall afflict them four hundred years;

14 And also that nation which they shall serve, will I judge: and afterward shall they come out with great substance.

15 And thou shalt go to thy fathers in peace; thou shalt be buried in a good old age.

16 But in the fourth generation they shall come hither again: for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet full.

17 And it came to pass, that when the sun had gone down, and it was dark, behold a smoking furnace, and a burning lamp that passed between those pieces.

18 In that same day the LORD made a covenant with Abram, saying, To thy seed have I given this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates:

19 The Kenites, and the Kenizzites, and the Kadmonites,

20 And the Hittites, and the Perizzites, and the Rephaims,

21 And the Amorites, and the Canaanites, and the Girgashites, and the Jebusites.

   

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Arcana Coelestia # 1860

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1860. And there was thick darkness. That this signifies when hatred was in the place of charity, is evident from the signification of “thick darkness.” In the Word “darkness” signifies falsities, and “thick darkness” evils (as shown just below). There is “darkness” when falsity is in the place of truth; and there is “thick darkness” when evil is in the place of good, or what is precisely the same, when hatred is in the place of charity. When hatred is in the place of charity, the thick darkness is so great that the man is quite unaware that it is evil, still less that it is so great an evil as in the other life to thrust him down to hell, for they who are in hatred perceive a kind of delight and as it were a kind of life in it, and this delight and life themselves cause him scarcely to know but that it is good, for whatever favors a man’s pleasure and cupidity, because it favors his love, he feels as good, and this to such a degree that when he is told that it is infernal he can scarcely believe it, still less when he is told that such delight and life are in the other life turned into an excrementitious and cadaverous stench. And still less does he believe that he is becoming a devil and a horrible image of hell; for hell consists of nothing but hatreds and such diabolical forms.

[2] Yet anyone might know this who possesses any faculty for thinking, for if he should describe or represent, or if he could in any manner picture, hatred, he would do it no otherwise than by diabolical forms, such as those who are in hatred also become after death, and, wonderful to say, such men are capable of declaring that in the other life they shall come into heaven; some merely for saying that they have faith, when yet there are in heaven none but forms of charity, and what these are may be seen from experience (n. 553). Let all such therefore consider how these two forms, of hatred and of charity, can agree together in one place.

[3] That “darkness” signifies falsity, and “thick darkness” evil, may be seen from the following passages in the Word.

In Isaiah:

Behold, darkness covereth the earth, and thick darkness the peoples (Isaiah 60:2).

In Joel:

Let all the inhabitants of the land tremble, for the day of Jehovah cometh, a day of darkness and thick darkness (Joel 2:1-2).

In Zephaniah:

That day is a day of wrath, a day of wasteness and desolation, a day of darkness and thick darkness (Zeph. 1:15).

In Amos:

Shall not the day of Jehovah be darkness and not light, and thick darkness and no brightness in it? (Amos 5:20).

In these passages “the day of Jehovah” denotes the last time of the church, which is here treated of; “darkness” denotes falsities, “thick darkness” evils; both therefore are mentioned; otherwise it would be a repetition of the same thing, or an unmeaning amplification. But the word in the original language that in this verse is rendered “thick darkness” involves falsity as well as evil, that is, dense falsity from which is evil, and also dense evil from which is falsity.

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