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Genesis 15

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1 After these things hath the word of Jehovah been unto Abram in a vision, saying, `Fear not, Abram, I [am] a shield to thee, thy reward [is] exceeding great.'

2 And Abram saith, `Lord Jehovah, what dost Thou give to me, and I am going childless? and an acquired son in my house is Demmesek Eliezer.'

3 And Abram saith, `Lo, to me Thou hast not given seed, and lo, a domestic doth heir me.'

4 And lo, the word of Jehovah [is] unto him, saying, `This [one] doth not heir thee; but he who cometh out from thy bowels, he doth heir thee;'

5 and He bringeth him out without, and saith, `Look attentively, I pray thee, towards the heavens, and count the stars, if thou art able to count them;' and He saith to him, `Thus is thy seed.'

6 And he hath believed in Jehovah, and He reckoneth it to him -- righteousness.

7 And He saith unto him, `I [am] Jehovah who brought thee out from Ur of the Chaldees, to give to thee this land to possess it;'

8 and he saith, `Lord Jehovah, whereby do I know that I possess it?'

9 And He saith unto him, `Take for Me a heifer of three years, and a she-goat of three years, and a ram of three years, and a turtle-dove, and a young bird;'

10 and he taketh to him all these, and separateth them in the midst, and putteth each piece over against its fellow, but the bird he hath not divided;

11 and the ravenous birds come down upon the carcases, and Abram causeth them to turn back.

12 And the sun is about to go in, and deep sleep hath fallen upon Abram, and lo, a terror of great darkness is falling upon him;

13 and He saith to Abram, `knowing -- know that thy seed is a sojourner in a land not theirs, and they have served them, and they have afflicted them four hundred years,

14 and the nation also whom they serve I judge, and after this they go out with great substance;

15 and thou -- thou comest in unto thy fathers in peace; thou art buried in a good old age;

16 and the fourth generation doth turn back hither, for the iniquity of the Amorite is not yet complete.'

17 And it cometh to pass -- the sun hath gone in, and thick darkness hath been -- and lo, a furnace of smoke, and a lamp of fire, which hath passed over between those pieces.

18 In that day hath Jehovah made with Abram a covenant, saying, `To thy seed I have given this land, from the river of Egypt unto the great river, the river Phrat,

19 with the Kenite, and the Kenizzite, and the Kadmonite,

20 and the Hittite, and the Perizzite, and the Rephaim,

21 and the Amorite, and the Canaanite, and the Girgashite, and the Jebusite.'

   

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Arcana Coelestia # 9342

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9342. 'For I will give the inhabitants of the land into your hand' means dominion over evils. This is clear from the meaning of 'giving into the hand' as overcoming and having dominion over; and from the meaning of 'the inhabitants of the land' as the Church's evils. Forms of good are meant by 'inhabitants', 2268, 2451, 2712, 3613, and therefore evils in the contrary sense; for the nations of the land of Canaan meant evils and falsities molesting and destroying the Church's forms of good and its truths, 9327.

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

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Arcana Coelestia # 2333

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2333. 'And in the morning you may rise up and go your way' means being strengthened in this way in good and truth. This becomes clear from the meaning of 'rising up in the morning', and also from the meaning of 'going on one's way'. In the Word 'the morning' means the Lord's kingdom and whatever belongs to the Lord's kingdom, and so primarily the good that flows from love and charity. This will be confirmed from the Word at verse 15. 'Way' however means truth, see 627. From this it follows that after they had been in his house and spent the night there, which meant that they dwelt in the good of charity with him, 'they rose up in the morning and went their way', which means that in this way they were confirmed in good and truth.

[2] These phrases, as do all the rest, show how far removed the internal sense is from the sense of the letter and therefore how hidden from view it is, especially in the historical parts of the Word. They show that this sense is not discernible unless individual expressions are explained according to the meaning they have all through the Word. Consequently when ideas are confined to the sense of the letter, the internal sense is seen as something altogether dark and obscure. Conversely when ideas are confined to the internal sense, the sense of the letter in a similar way is seen as something obscure. Indeed angels see it as nothing, for angels no longer have worldly and bodily ideas as man does, but spiritual and celestial ones, into which the expressions of the sense of the letter are marvellously converted when the Word which man is reading rises up to the sphere in which angels dwell, that is, up to heaven. This happens because of the correspondence of spiritual things with worldly, and of celestial with bodily, a correspondence which is absolutely consistent but whose nature has not been disclosed until now in the explanation of expressions, names, and numbers in the Word as to their internal sense.

[3] So that the nature of that correspondence may be known, or what amounts to the same, how worldly and bodily ideas pass over into corresponding spiritual and celestial ideas when they are raised towards heaven, let 'the morning' and 'way' be taken as examples: When a person reads of 'the morning', as in the phrase here 'rising up in the morning', angels do not conceive the idea of the start to a new day but the idea which 'morning' has in the spiritual sense. The idea they conceive is similar to the statement in Samuel,

The Rock of Israel . . . He is like morning light, when the sun rises on a cloudless morning. 2 Samuel 23:3-4.

And in Daniel,

The Holy One said to me, Up to the evening when it is becoming morning, two thousand three hundred times. Daniel 8:14, 26.

Thus instead of 'the morning' angels perceive the Lord, or His kingdom, or celestial things of love and charity. This they do varyingly according to the train of thought in the Word which a person is reading.

[4] Similarly where a person reads of 'a way', as in 'going on your way' here, they cannot have any idea of a way, but a spiritual or a celestial idea, that is to say, like that in John, when the Lord said,

I am the way and the truth. John 14:6.

Also the idea in David,

Make Your ways known to me, O Jehovah, guide my way in truth. Psalms 25:4-5.

And in Isaiah,

He made him know the way of understanding. Isaiah 40:14.

Thus instead of 'a way' angels perceive truth. They do so in the historical as well as the prophetical sections of the Word; in fact angels no longer have any interest in matters of history as these are not at all in keeping with the ideas they have. Consequently in place of historical details they perceive such things as belong to the Lord and His kingdom, which also follow on one after another in marvellous array and perfect sequence in the internal sense. For this reason, so that the Word may serve angels as well, all historical details there are representative, and each expression serves to mean such things. This special feature is what makes the Word different from all other literature.

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