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Exodus 34

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1 And Jehovah saith unto Moses, `Hew for thyself two tables of stone like the first, and I have written on the tables the words which were on the first tables which thou hast broken;

2 and be prepared at morning, and thou hast come up in the morning unto mount Sinai, and hast stood before Me there, on the top of the mount,

3 and no man cometh up with thee, and also no man is seen in all the mount, also the flock and the herd do not feed over-against that mount.'

4 And he heweth two tables of stone like the first, and Moses riseth early in the morning, and goeth up unto mount Sinai, as Jehovah commanded him, and he taketh in his hand two tables of stone.

5 And Jehovah cometh down in a cloud, and stationeth Himself with him there, and calleth in the Name of Jehovah,

6 and Jehovah passeth over before his face, and calleth: `Jehovah, Jehovah God, merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abundant in kindness and truth,

7 keeping kindness for thousands, taking away iniquity, and transgression, and sin, and not entirely acquitting, charging iniquity of fathers on children, and on children's children, on a third [generation], and on a fourth.'

8 And Moses hasteth, and boweth to the earth, and doth obeisance,

9 and saith, `If, I pray Thee, I have found grace in Thine eyes, O my Lord, let my Lord, I pray Thee, go in our midst (for it [is] a stiff-necked people), and thou hast forgiven our iniquity and our sin, and hast inherited us.'

10 And He saith, `Lo, I am making a covenant: before all thy people I do wonders, which have not been done in all the earth, or in any nation, and all the people in whose midst thou [art] have seen the work of Jehovah, for it [is] fearful that which I am doing with thee.

11 `Observe for thyself that which I am commanding thee to-day: lo, I am casting out from before thee the Amorite, and the Canaanite, and the Hittite, and the Perizzite, and the Hivite, and the Jebusite;

12 take heed to thyself, lest thou make a covenant with the inhabitant of the land into which thou art going, lest it become a snare in thy midst;

13 for their altars ye break down, and their standing pillars ye shiver, and its shrines ye cut down;

14 for ye do not bow yourselves to another god -- for Jehovah, whose name [is] Zealous, is a zealous God.

15 `Lest thou make a covenant with the inhabitant of the land, and they have gone a-whoring after their gods, and have sacrificed to their gods, and [one] hath called to thee, and thou hast eaten of his sacrifice,

16 and thou hast taken of their daughters to thy sons, and their daughters have gone a-whoring after their gods, and have caused thy sons to go a-whoring after their gods;

17 a molten god thou dost not make to thyself.

18 `The feast of unleavened things thou dost keep; seven days thou dost eat unleavened things, as I have commanded thee, at an appointed time, the month of Abib: for in the month of Abib thou didst come out from Egypt.

19 `All opening a womb [are] Mine, and every firstling of thy cattle born a male, ox or sheep;

20 and the firstling of an ass thou dost ransom with a lamb; and if thou dost not ransom, then thou hast beheaded it; every first-born of thy sons thou dost ransom, and they do not appear before Me empty.

21 `Six days thou dost work, and on the seventh day thou dost rest; in ploughing-time and in harvest thou dost rest.

22 `And a feast of weeks thou dost observe for thyself; first-fruits of wheat-harvest; and the feast of in-gathering, at the revolution of the year.

23 `Three times in a year do all thy males appear before the Lord Jehovah, God of Israel;

24 for I dispossess nations from before thee, and have enlarged thy border, and no man doth desire thy land in thy going up to appear before Jehovah thy God three times in a year.

25 `Thou dost not slaughter with a fermented thing the blood of My sacrifice; and the sacrifice of the feast of the passover doth not remain till morning:

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

27 And Jehovah saith unto Moses, `Write for thyself these words, for, according to the tenor of these words I have made with thee a covenant, and with Israel.'

28 And he is there with Jehovah forty days and forty nights; bread he hath not eaten, and water he hath not drunk; and he writeth on the tables the matters of the covenant -- the ten matters.

29 And it cometh to pass, when Moses is coming down from mount Sinai (and the two tables of the testimony [are] in the hand of Moses in his coming down from the mount), that Moses hath not known that the skin of his face hath shone in His speaking with him,

30 and Aaron seeth -- all the sons of Israel also -- Moses, and lo, the skin of his face hath shone, and they are afraid of coming nigh unto him.

31 And Moses calleth unto them, and Aaron and all the princes in the company return unto him, and Moses speaketh unto them;

32 and afterwards have all the sons of Israel come nigh, and he chargeth them with all that Jehovah hath spoken with him in mount Sinai.

33 And Moses finisheth speaking with them, and putteth on his face a vail;

34 and in the going in of Moses before Jehovah to speak with Him, he turneth aside the vail until his coming out; and he hath come out and hath spoken unto the sons of Israel that which he is commanded;

35 and the sons of Israel have seen the face of Moses that the skin of the face of Moses hath shone, and Moses hath put back the vail on his face until his going in to speak with Him.

   

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Arcana Coelestia # 6306

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6306. 'Which I took out of the hand of the Amorite' means because of the victory over evil. This is clear from the representation of 'the Amorite' as evil, dealt with in 1857; and from the meaning of 'taking out of the hand' as acquiring through victory. As regards 'the Amorites', it should be recognized that they mean evil, just as 'the Canaanites' and all the other nations in the land that are mentioned in the Word mean various kinds of evil and also of falsity. Such things were represented by the nations when the children of Israel were taking possession of the land of Canaan. The reason for this was that whenever the children of Israel represented the things of heaven those nations represented the things of hell; thus the land of Canaan represented every state that exists in the next life. Also, because the nations represented the things of hell they were utterly destroyed; and entrance into any treaty with those who might remain was forbidden.

[2] The action of the children of Israel, of their taking possession of and dwelling in the land of those who represented the hells, was representative. It represented what happened around the time of the Lord's Coming, when spirits from hell had possession of a large part of heaven but He, by coming into the world and making the human within Himself Divine, cast them out of there and down into hell, and thereby delivered heaven from them, which He then gave as an inheritance to those who belonged to His spiritual kingdom.

[3] The representation of the Amorite nation as evil in general is evident from the places where it is referred to, as in Ezekiel, Thus said the Lord Jehovih to Jerusalem, 1 Your tradings and your births are of the land of the Canaanite. Your father was an Amorite and your mother a Hittite. Ezekiel 16:3, 45.

'Father' in the internal sense means the Church's good, or in the contrary sense evil, and 'mother' means the Church's truth, or in the contrary sense falsity; and this is why it is said, 'Your father was an Amorite and your mother a Hittite'.

[4] In Amos,

I destroyed the Amorite before them, whose height was like the height of the cedars, and whose strength was like the oaks. I led you in the wilderness, to possess the land of the Amorite. Amos 2:9-10.

Here also 'the Amorite' stands for evil, for the evil of self-love is described by 'the height of the cedars' and 'the strength of an oak'. The reason why 'the Amorite' means evil in general is that the entire land of Canaan was called 'the land of the Amorite'; for it says, 'I led you in the wilderness, to possess the land of the Amorite'. In addition the second Book of Kings says,

Manasseh king of Judah did what was evil, greater than all the evil which the Amorites did, who were before him. 2 Kings 21:11.

[5] 'With my sword' means through truth engaged in conflict. This is clear from the meaning of 'sword' as truth engaged in conflict, dealt with in 2799, 4499.

'And my bow' means received from doctrine. This is clear from the meaning of 'bow' as doctrine, dealt with in 2686, 2709.

[6] The words used here, 'the portion which I took out of the hand of the Amorite with my sword and my bow' were, it is quite evident, uttered by Israel on account of the internal sense; for Jacob did not take that portion from the Amorite with sword or bow. He bought it from the sons of Hamor, as is evident from Genesis 33, where these words occur, Jacob came to Salem, the city of Shechem, which is in the land of Canaan, as he was coming from Paddan Aram; and he encamped towards the face of the city. And he bought the portion of the field where he had stretched his tent, from the hand of the sons of Hamor, the father of Shechem, for a hundred kesitahs. Genesis 33:18-19.

The fact that this field was the portion he gave to Joseph is clear in Joshua,

The bones of Joseph which the children of Israel caused to be brought up out of Egypt they buried in Shechem, in the part of the field which Jacob bought from the sons of Hamor, the father of Shechem, for a hundred kesitahs; and they had become an inheritance for the children of Joseph. Joshua 24:32.

From this it is evident that the portion had been bought, and that this is what was given to Joseph. Nor was the city of Shechem nearby meant, the city in which Simeon and Levi killed every male and which they took with the sword, Genesis 34. This is made clear by the fact that Jacob detested what they did and for that reason cursed Simeon and Levi, completely dissociating himself from the crime. He said,

Simeon and Levi are brothers; instruments of violence are their swords. Into their secret place let my soul not come; in their congregation let not my glory be united; for in their anger they killed a man, and in their pleasure they hamstrung an ox. Cursed be their anger, for it was fierce, and their wrath, for it was hard. 2 I will divide them in Jacob, and scatter them in Israel. Genesis 49:5-7.

From all this it may now be seen that the words 'the portion which I took out of the hand of the Amorite with my sword and my bow' were uttered by him, when the spirit of prophecy rested on him, for the sake of the internal sense.

Poznámky pod čarou:

1. The Latin means O Jerusalem but the Hebrew means to Jerusalem, which Swedenborg has in other places where he quotes this verse (and possibly in his rough draft here).

2. i.e. cruel

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