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Deuteronomy 13

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1 `When there ariseth in your midst a prophet, or a dreamer of a dream, and he hath given unto thee a sign or wonder,

2 and the sign and the wonder hath come which he hath spoken of unto thee, saying, Let us go after other gods (which thou hast not known), and serve them,

3 thou dost not hearken unto the words of that prophet, or unto that dreamer of the dream, for Jehovah your God is trying you, to know whether ye are loving Jehovah your God with all your heart, and with all your soul;

4 after Jehovah your God ye walk, and Him ye fear, and His commands ye keep, and to His voice ye hearken, and Him ye serve, and to Him ye cleave.

5 `And that prophet, or that dreamer of the dream, is put to death, for he hath spoken apostacy against Jehovah your God (who is bringing you out of the land of Egypt, and hath ransomed you out of a house of servants), to drive you out of the way in which Jehovah thy God hath commanded thee to walk, and thou hast put away the evil thing from thy midst.

6 `When thy brother -- son of thy mother, or thy son, or thy daughter, or the wife of thy bosom, or thy friend who [is] as thine own soul -- doth move thee, in secret, saying, Let us go and serve other gods -- (which thou hast not known, thou and thy fathers,

7 of the gods of the peoples who [are] round about you, who are near unto thee, or who are far off from thee, from the end of the earth even unto the end of the earth) --

8 thou dost not consent to him, nor hearken unto him, nor doth thine eye have pity on him, nor dost thou spare, nor dost thou cover him over.

9 `But thou dost surely kill him; thy hand is on him, in the first place, to put him to death, and the hand of all the people last;

10 and thou hast stoned him with stones, and he hath died, for he hath sought to drive thee away from Jehovah thy God, who is bringing thee out of the land of Egypt, out of a house of servants;

11 and all Israel do hear and fear, and add not to do like this evil thing in thy midst.

12 `When thou hearest, in one of thy cities which Jehovah thy God is giving to thee to dwell there, [one] saying,

13 Men, sons of worthlessness, have gone out of thy midst, and they force away the inhabitants of their city, saying, Let us go and serve other gods, which ye have not known --

14 and thou hast enquired, and searched, and asked diligently, and lo, truth; the thing is established; this abomination hath been done in thy midst:

15 `Thou dost surely smite the inhabitants of that city by the mouth of the sword; devoting it, and all that [is] in it, even its cattle, by the mouth of the sword;

16 and all its spoil thou dost gather unto the midst of its broad place, and hast burned with fire the city and all its spoil completely, before Jehovah thy God, and it hath been a heap age-during, it is not built any more;

17 and there doth not cleave to thy hand any of the devoted thing, so that Jehovah doth turn back from the fierceness of His anger, and hath given to thee mercies, and loved thee, and multiplied thee, as He hath sworn to thy fathers,

18 when thou dost hearken to the voice of Jehovah thy God, to keep all his commands which I am commanding thee to-day, to do that which [is] right in the eyes of Jehovah thy God.

   

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Broad place

  
Rhodes town square, photo by [http://flickr.com/photos/99475348@N00 Clarence]

Height relates to the desire for good and breadth relates to the knowledge of truth. Following that, something that is “broad” has a great capacity for truth, and a “broad place” or “broad land” is one where a large amount of truth can be learned and understood. This meaning also applies to town squares, which are mentioned several times in the Bible (the angels who visited Lot in Genesis 19 were initially going to stay in Sodom’s town square, for instance). “Square” or “town square” is modernized language; the literal translation is a “broad place” in the town.

(Odkazy: Arcana Coelestia 1613 [1-2], 4482 [1-3], 6856; The Apocalypse Explained 652 [3])


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Arcana Coelestia # 4482

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4482. 'Behold, the land is broad and spacious before them' means extension, that is to say, of truth which is the truth of doctrine. This is clear from the meaning of 'the land' as the Church, dealt with just above in 4480, and from the meaning of 'broad and spacious' as extension as regards truths, and so as regards those taught by doctrine. When in the Word the measurements of something are given, it is not those measurements that are meant in the internal sense but the essential characteristics of a state that is being described. For measurements involve spatial dimensions and in the next life there are no intervals of space, as there are no periods of time, but states which correspond to these, see 2625, 2837, 3356, 3387, 3404, 4321. That being so, lengths, breadths, and heights, which are spatial measurements, mean the aspects of a state - length meaning holiness, height good, and breadth truth, see 650, 1613, 3433, 3434. This then is why 'the land is broad and spacious' means the extension of truth which is the truth of doctrine within the Church.

[2] Anyone who does not know of the existence of anything spiritual in the Word other than that which stands out in the literal sense is bound to be amazed by the statement that 'the land is broad and specious' means the extension of truth which is the truth of doctrine within the Church. But the truth of this statement may be established from places where 'breadth' is mentioned in the Word, as in Isaiah,

Asshur will go through Judah, it will deluge it and pass through and will reach even to the neck; and the outstretchings of its wings will fill the breadth of the land. Isaiah 8:8.

In David,

O Jehovah, You have not shut me up into the hand of the enemy. You have made my feet stand in a broad place. Psalms 31:8.

In the same author,

Out of my distress I called on Jah; He answered me in a broad place. Psalms 118:5.

In Habakkuk,

I am rousing the Chaldeans, a bitter and hasty nation, marching' into the breadths of the earth. Habakkuk 1:6.

'Breadths' here means nothing other than the truth of the Church.

[3] The reason why breadth has this meaning is that in the spiritual world, that is, in heaven, the Lord is the centre of all, for He is the Sun there. Those in a state of good are more interior, their exact position towards the middle being determined by the character and the amount of the good present in them. This is why 'height' is used in reference to good. Those who are in a similar degree of good are also in a similar degree of truth, and so dwell so to speak at the same distance from the centre, or one might say, dwell on the same contour; and this is why 'breadth' is used in reference to truths. Therefore when a person reads the Word the angels present with him do not understand by 'breadth' anything other than truths. When in the Historical sections, for example, the ark, the altar, the temple, and the spaces outside cities are referred to, states of good and truth are perceived by the dimensions indicating the lengths, breadths, and heights of these. The same is so with the new earth, new Jerusalem, and new Temple - described in Chapters 40-47 of Ezekiel - by which heaven and a new Church are meant, as may be seen from the detailed descriptions in those chapters. So also in John where it is said of the New Jerusalem that it will be foursquare, 'its length being as great as its breadth', Revelation 21:16.

[4] Things which in the spiritual world are interior are described as those that are higher, while those that are exterior are described by those that are lower, 2148, for while in the world, no one can conceive of interior things and exterior ones in any other way, for the reason that he dwells within space and time, and things that belong to space and time have entered in among the ideas comprising his thought and have conditioned the majority of these. From this it is also evident that expressions which give the spatial measurements of things such as the height, length, and breadth of them, are in the spiritual sense expressions used to indicate the magnitude of affections for good and affections for truth.

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