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Exodus 23

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1 `Thou dost not lift up a vain report; thou dost not put thy hand with a wicked man to be a violent witness.

2 `Thou art not after many to evil, nor dost thou testify concerning a strife, to turn aside after many to cause [others] to turn aside;

3 and a poor man thou dost not honour in his strife.

4 `When thou meetest thine enemy's ox or his ass going astray, thou dost certainly turn it back to him;

5 when thou seest the ass of him who is hating thee crouching under its burden, then thou hast ceased from leaving [it] to it -- thou dost certainly leave [it] with him.

6 `Thou dost not turn aside the judgment of thy needy one in his strife;

7 from a false matter thou dost keep far off, and an innocent and righteous man thou dost not slay; for I do not justify a wicked man.

8 `And a bribe thou dost not take; for the bribe bindeth the open-[eyed], and perverteth the words of the righteous.

9 `And a sojourner thou dost not oppress, and ye -- ye have known the soul of the sojourner, for sojourners ye have been in the land of Egypt.

10 `And six years thou dost sow thy land, and hast gathered its increase;

11 and the seventh thou dost release it, and hast left it, and the needy of thy people have eaten, and their leaving doth the beast of the field eat; so dost thou to thy vineyard -- to thine olive-yard.

12 `Six days thou dost do thy work, and on the seventh day thou dost rest, so that thine ox and thine ass doth rest, and the son of thine handmaid and the sojourner is refreshed;

13 and in all that which I have said unto you ye do take heed; and the name of other gods ye do not mention; it is not heard on thy mouth.

14 `Three times thou dost keep a feast to Me in a year;

15 the Feast of Unleavened things thou dost keep; seven days thou dost eat Unleavened things, as I have commanded thee, at the time appointed [in] the month of Abib; for in it thou hast come forth out of Egypt, and ye do not appear [in] My presence empty;

16 and the Feast of Harvest, the first fruits of thy works which thou sowest in the field; and the Feast of the In-Gathering, in the outgoing of the year, in thy gathering thy works out of the field.

17 `Three times in a year do all thy males appear before the face of the Lord Jehovah.

18 `Thou dost not sacrifice on a fermented thing the blood of My sacrifice, and the fat of My festival doth not remain till morning;

19 the beginning of the first-fruits of thy ground thou dost bring into the house of Jehovah thy God; thou dost not boil a kid in its mother's milk.

20 `Lo, I am sending a messenger before thee to keep thee in the way, and to bring thee in unto the place which I have prepared;

21 be watchful because of his presence, and hearken to his voice, rebel not against him, for he beareth not with your transgression, for My name [is] in his heart;

22 for, if thou diligently hearken to his voice, and hast done all that which I speak, then I have been at enmity with thine enemies, and have distressed those distressing thee.

23 `For My messenger goeth before thee, and hath brought thee in unto the Amorite, and the Hittite, and the Perizzite, and the Canaanite, the Hivite, and the Jebusite, and I have cut them off.

24 `Thou dost not bow thyself to their gods, nor serve them, nor do according to their doings, but dost utterly devote them, and thoroughly break their standing pillars.

25 `And ye have served Jehovah your God, and He hath blessed thy bread and thy water, and I have turned aside sickness from thine heart;

26 there is not a miscarrying and barren one in thy land; the number of thy days I fulfil:

27 My terror I send before thee, and I have put to death all the people among whom thou comest, and I have given the neck of all thine enemies unto thee.

28 `And I have sent the hornet before thee, and it hath cast out the Hivite, the Canaanite, and the Hittite, from before thee;

29 I cast them not out from before thee in one year, lest the land be a desolation, and the beast of the field hath multiplied against thee;

30 little [by] little I cast them out from before thee, till thou art fruitful, and hast inherited the land.

31 `And I have set thy border from the Red Sea, even unto the sea of the Philistines, and from the wilderness unto the River: for I give into your hand the inhabitants of the land, and thou hast cast them out from before thee;

32 thou dost not make a covenant with them, and with their gods;

33 they do not dwell in thy land, lest they cause thee to sin against Me when thou servest their gods, when it becometh a snare to thee.'

   

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Ox, young

  

'The son of a cow' signifies the celestial natural level and natural exterior good.

(Odkazy: Arcana Coelestia 2184 [1-7], 4244)

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Arcana Coelestia # 2342

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2342. 'And he baked unleavened bread' means purification. This is clear from the meaning of 'unleavened' or without yeast. In the Word 'bread' means in general every celestial and spiritual food, and so in general everything celestial and spiritual, see 276, 680, 1798, 2165, 2177. The need for the latter to be free of all impurities or unholiness was represented by 'unleavened bread'; for 'yeast' means the evil and falsity by means of which celestial and spiritual things are rendered impure and profane. On account of this representation those who belonged to the representative Church were forbidden in sacrifices to offer any bread or minchah other than bread without yeast, that is, unleavened, as is clear in Moses,

Every minchah which you bring to Jehovah shall be made without yeast. Leviticus 2:11. In the same author,

You shall not sacrifice the blood of My sacrifice with that made with yeast. Exodus 23:18; 34:25.

[2] They were also forbidden therefore to eat any other bread during the seven days of the Passover than bread without yeast, that is, which was unleavened. This prohibition occurs in the following verses in Moses,

For seven days you shall eat unleavened bread; even on the first day you shall remove yeast from your houses, for anyone eating that made with yeast, that soul shall be cut off from Israel, from the first day until the seventh. In the first [month], on the fourteenth day of the month, in the evening, you shall eat unleavened bread until the twenty-first day of the month, in the evening. For seven days no yeast shall be found in your houses, for anyone eating that made with yeast, that soul shall be cut off from the congregation of Israel, whether a settler or one born in the land. Exodus 12:15, 19-20.

The same prohibition appears in other places as well, such as Exodus 13:6-7; 23:15; 34:18; Deuteronomy 16:3-4. Consequently the Passover is called the Feast of Unleavened Bread, Leviticus 23:6; Numbers 28:16-17; Matthew 26:17; Luke 22:1, 7.

[3] That the Passover represented the glorification of the Lord and so the conjunction of the Divine with the human race will in the Lord's Divine mercy be shown elsewhere. And because the conjunction of the Lord with the human race is effected by means of love and charity, and by means of the faith deriving from these, celestial and spiritual things were represented by the unleavened bread which they were to eat each day during the Passover. Consequently to prevent the defilement of those things by anything unholy they were strictly forbidden to eat anything made with yeast, so strictly that any who did so were to be cut off; for those who profane celestial and spiritual things inevitably perish. Anyone may see that but for this arcanum within it that observance, together with so harsh a penalty, would never have been introduced.

[4] Everything that was commanded in that Church represented some arcanum, even the actual cooking, as with every instruction which the children of Israel carried out when they were leaving Egypt, namely that they were to eat that night flesh roasted by fire, and unleavened bread on bitter herbs; they were not to eat it raw or cooked in water; the head had to be on its legs; they were to let none of it remain until the morning; they were to burn what was left over with fire, Exodus 12:8-10. Every detail of these instructions was representative - eating it at night; flesh roasted by fire; unleavened bread on bitter herbs; the head on the legs; not raw; not cooked in water; not leaving any until the morning; and burning what was left with fire. But the arcana represented are in no way apparent unless they are disclosed by means of the internal sense. That sense alone shows that all these details are Divine.

[5] Something similar was done in the ritual for the taking of a Nazirite vow. The priest was to take the cooked shoulder of the ram, and one unleavened cake from the basket, and one unleavened wafer, and he was to place them on the palms of the Nazirite after he had shaved his consecrated head, Numbers 6:19. Anyone who does not know that a Nazirite represented the celestial man himself does not know either that every detail of these instructions embodies celestial things, and so arcana, which are not apparent in the letter, namely the instructions to take the cooked shoulder of a ram, an unleavened cake, an unleavened wafer, and to shave off his hair. This also shows what kind of opinion regarding the Word can be gained by people who do not believe in the existence of an internal sense, for without the internal sense such details are of no consequence at all. But when the ceremonial or ritualistic element has been stripped away everything becomes Divine and holy. Everything else has a deeper meaning, as does 'unleavened bread' which means the holiness of love, or what is most holy, as it is also called in Moses,

The unleavened bread that was left over was to be eaten by Aaron and his sons in a holy place, for it was most holy. Leviticus 6:16-17.

'Unleavened bread' therefore means pure love, and 'the baking of that which is unleavened' purification.

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