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Deuteronomy 32

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1 Give ear, you heavens, and I will speak. Let the earth hear the words of my mouth.

2 My doctrine shall drop as the rain. My speech shall condense as the dew, as the small rain on the tender grass, as the showers on the herb.

3 For I will proclaim the name of Yahweh. Ascribe greatness to our God!

4 The Rock, his work is perfect, for all his ways are justice: a God of faithfulness and without iniquity, just and right is he.

5 They have dealt corruptly with him, [they are] not his children, [it is] their blemish. [They are] a perverse and crooked generation.

6 Do you thus requite Yahweh, foolish people and unwise? Isn't he your father who has bought you? He has made you, and established you.

7 Remember the days of old. Consider the years of many generations. Ask your father, and he will show you; your elders, and they will tell you.

8 When the Most High gave to the nations their inheritance, when he separated the children of men, he set the bounds of the peoples according to the number of the children of Israel.

9 For Yahweh's portion is his people. Jacob is the lot of his inheritance.

10 He found him in a desert land, in the waste howling wilderness. He surrounded him. He cared for him. He kept him as the apple of his eye.

11 As an eagle that stirs up her nest, that flutters over her young, he spread abroad his wings, he took them, he bore them on his feathers.

12 Yahweh alone led him. There was no foreign god with him.

13 He made him ride on the high places of the earth. He ate the increase of the field. He caused him to suck honey out of the rock, oil out of the flinty rock;

14 Butter of the herd, and milk of the flock, with fat of lambs, rams of the breed of Bashan, and goats, with the finest of the wheat. Of the blood of the grape you drank wine.

15 But Jeshurun grew fat, and kicked. You have grown fat. You have grown thick. You have become sleek. Then he forsook God who made him, and lightly esteemed the Rock of his salvation.

16 They moved him to jealousy with strange [gods]. They provoked him to anger with abominations.

17 They sacrificed to demons, [which were] no God, to gods that they didn't know, to new [gods] that came up of late, which your fathers didn't dread.

18 Of the Rock who became your father, you are unmindful, and have forgotten God who gave you birth.

19 Yahweh saw [it], and abhorred [them], because of the provocation of his sons and his daughters.

20 He said, "I will hide my face from them. I will see what their end shall be; for they are a very perverse generation, children in whom is no faithfulness.

21 They have moved me to jealousy with that which is not God. They have provoked me to anger with their vanities. I will move them to jealousy with those who are not a people. I will provoke them to anger with a foolish nation.

22 For a fire is kindled in my anger, Burns to the lowest Sheol, Devours the earth with its increase, and sets the foundations of the mountains on fire.

23 "I will heap evils on them. I will spend my arrows on them.

24 [They shall be] wasted with hunger, and devoured with burning heat and bitter destruction. I will send the teeth of animals on them, With the poison of crawling things of the dust.

25 Outside the sword shall bereave, and in the rooms, terror; on both young man and virgin, The nursing infant with the gray-haired man.

26 I said, I would scatter them afar. I would make the memory of them to cease from among men;

27 were it not that I feared the provocation of the enemy, lest their adversaries should judge wrongly, lest they should say, 'Our hand is exalted, Yahweh has not done all this.'"

28 For they are a nation void of counsel. There is no understanding in them.

29 Oh that they were wise, that they understood this, that they would consider their latter end!

30 How could one chase a thousand, and two put ten thousand to flight, unless their Rock had sold them, and Yahweh had delivered them up?

31 For their rock is not as our rock, even our enemies themselves being judges.

32 For their vine is of the vine of Sodom, of the fields of Gomorrah. Their grapes are grapes of gall, Their clusters are bitter.

33 Their wine is the poison of serpents, The cruel venom of asps.

34 "Isn't this laid up in store with me, sealed up among my treasures?

35 Vengeance is mine, and recompense, at the time when their foot slides; for the day of their calamity is at hand. The things that are to come on them shall make haste."

36 For Yahweh will judge his people, and have compassion on his servants, when he sees that [their] power is gone, There is none [remaining], shut up or left at large.

37 He will say, "Where are their gods, The rock in which they took refuge;

38 Which ate the fat of their sacrifices, And drank the wine of their drink offering? Let them rise up and help you! Let them be your protection.

39 "See now that I, even I, am he, There is no god with me. I kill, and I make alive. I wound, and I heal. There is no one who can deliver out of my hand.

40 For I lift up my hand to heaven, And say, As I live forever,

41 if I whet my glittering sword, My hand take hold on judgment; I will render vengeance to my adversaries, and will recompense those who hate me.

42 I will make my arrows drunk with blood. My sword shall devour flesh with the blood of the slain and the captives, from the head of the leaders of the enemy."

43 Rejoice, you nations, [with] his people, for he will avenge the blood of his servants. He will render vengeance to his adversaries, And will make expiation for his land, for his people.

44 Moses came and spoke all the words of this song in the ears of the people, he and Joshua the son of Nun.

45 Moses made an end of speaking all these words to all Israel;

46 He said to them, "Set your heart to all the words which I testify to you this day, which you shall command your children to observe to do, [even] all the words of this law.

47 For it is no vain thing for you; because it is your life, and through this thing you shall prolong your days in the land, where you go over the Jordan to possess it."

48 Yahweh spoke to Moses that same day, saying,

49 "Go up into this mountain of Abarim, to Mount Nebo, which is in the land of Moab, that is over against Jericho; and see the land of Canaan, which I give to the children of Israel for a possession;

50 and die on the mountain where you go up, and be gathered to your people, as Aaron your brother died on Mount Hor, and was gathered to his people:

51 because you trespassed against me in the midst of the children of Israel at the waters of Meribah of Kadesh, in the wilderness of Zin; because you didn't sanctify me in the midst of the children of Israel.

52 For you shall see the land before you; but you shall not go there into the land which I give the children of Israel."

   

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Arcana Coelestia # 7051

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7051. People who know nothing at all about the internal sense of the Word cannot help thinking that the Israelite and Jewish nation was chosen in preference to every other nation and was therefore of superior quality to all the rest, as those who belonged to that nation also thought. And what is so astonishing, this is not only what that nation itself thinks but also what Christians think, no matter how well they know that this nation is eaten up by filthy kinds of love, by foul avarice, hatred, and pride, and in addition to this belittles and also loathes things of an internal nature that belong to charity and faith and are the Lord's. The reason why Christians also think that this nation was chosen in preference to others is that they think a person is chosen and saved as a result of mercy, irrespective of the life he leads, so that those who are criminal can be received into heaven just as well as the godly and upright. They give no consideration to the idea that choice or election is all-embracing, that is to say, that it includes all who lead a good life. Nor do they consider that the Lord's mercy is shown to every person who refrains from evil and wishes to lead a good life, and so who allows himself to be led by the Lord and to be regenerated, a process which is being effected throughout the course of his life.

[2] This goes to explain too why the majority of people in the Christian world also believe that that nation will again be chosen, and that when this happens they will be led back into the land of Canaan. And this belief is also in keeping with the sense of the letter, for example in the following places:

Isaiah 10:20-23; 11:11-12; Isaiah 29:14-end; 43:5, 6; 49:6-26; 56:8; 60:4; 61:3-10; 62;

Jeremiah 3:14-19; 15:4, 14; 16:13, 15; 23:7-8; 24:9-10; 31:31, 33; 25:29; 29:14, 18; 30:3, 8-11; 31:8-10, 17; 33:16, 20, 26;

Ezekiel 5:10, 12, 15; 16:60; 20:41; 22:15-16; 34:12-13; 37:21-22; 38:12; 39:23, 27-28;

Daniel 7:27; 12:7;

Hosea 3:4-5; Joel 2:32; 3; Amos 9:8-9 and following verses; Micah 5:7-8.

It is on the basis of these as well as other places that even Christians think that nation will again be chosen and led into the land of Canaan. They think this even though they know that nation is waiting for the Messiah who will then lead the nation in, and are at the same time aware that its waiting for Him is in vain, and that the Messiah's or Christ's kingdom is not of this world, which means that the land of Canaan into which the Messiah will lead them is heaven.

[3] Such people give no thought to the idea that the Word has a spiritual sense within it and that in that sense Israel is not meant by Israel, Jacob by Jacob, or Judah by Judah, but that the things which they represent are meant by them. Nor do they give any thought to what the historical sections record regarding that nation - what it was like in the wilderness and what it was like after that in the land of Canaan, namely that it was at heart idolatrous - or to what the Prophets say about it and about its spiritual whoredom and its abominations. What that nation is like is described in the following words contained in the Song in Moses,

I will conceal My face from them; I will see what their future will be, for they are a perverse generation, sons in whom there is no faithfulness. I would have said, I will expel them to the remotest corners, I will make the memory of them cease from mankind, except that enemies might say, Our hand is high, and not Jehovah has done all this. For they are a nation from whom counsel has perished, nor is there intelligence in them. From the vine of Sodom comes their vine, and from the fields of Gomorrah; their grapes are grapes of poison, they have clusters of bitterness. The poison of snakes (draco) is their wine, and the cruel poison of asps. Is this not hidden away with Me, sealed up in My treasuries? Vengeance is Mine, and recompense; in time their foot will slip, for near is the day of their destruction, and the things to come upon them hasten on. Deuteronomy 32:20, 26-28, 32-35.

Jehovah gave Moses the words of this song, see Deuteronomy 31:19, 21. The Lord too spoke about what that nation was like, in John,

You are from your father the devil, and the desires of your father you will to do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and has not stood in the truth. John 8:44.

And many other places besides these show what that nation was like.

[4] The reason why, although they know these things, Christians believe that that nation will at length be converted to the Lord and at that time led into the land where they lived before is, as has been stated, that they have no knowledge of the internal sense of the Word. Another reason is their supposition that it makes no difference what kind of life a person leads, and that even evil which has become deeply rooted through repeated actions in no way prevents a person - through faith, even if it has existed for only one part of an hour - from being made spiritual, being regenerated, and so being accepted by the Lord. They also suppose that admission into heaven is solely a matter of mercy, and that this is shown towards one particular nation, thus not towards all in the whole world who receive the Lord's mercy. Those who think in that way do not know that it is altogether contrary to the Divine that some should be chosen and born to salvation and heaven, and others should not be chosen but born to damnation and hell. To think about the Divine in that kind of way would be shocking, for making such choices would show a complete lack of mercy, when in fact the Divine is Mercy itself. From all this it may now be recognized that the Israelite and Jewish nation was not and never will be the chosen nation; also that not a trace of the Church existed or could exist with that nation, only a representative of the Church; and that it was preserved right up to the present day because of the Old Testament Word, regarding which see 3479.

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