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Numbers 13

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1 And Jehovah speaketh unto Moses, saying,

2 `Send for thee men, and they spy the land of Canaan, which I am giving to the sons of Israel; one man, one man for the tribe of his fathers ye do Send, every one a prince among them.'

3 And Moses sendeth them from the wilderness of Paran by the command of Jehovah; all of them [are] men, heads of the sons of Israel they are,

4 and these their names: For the tribe of Reuben, Shammua son of Zaccur.

5 For the tribe of Simeon, Shaphat son of Hori.

6 For the tribe of Judah, Caleb son of Jephunneh.

7 For the tribe of Issachar, Igal son of Joseph.

8 For the tribe of Ephraim, Oshea, son of Nun.

9 For the tribe of Benjamin, Palti son of Raphu.

10 For the tribe of Zebulun, Gaddiel son of Sodi.

11 For the tribe of Joseph, (for the tribe of Manasseh,) Gaddi son of Susi.

12 For the tribe of Dan, Ammiel son of Gemalli.

13 For the tribe of Asher, Sethur son of Michael.

14 For the tribe of Naphtali, Nahbi son of Vopshi.

15 For the tribe of Gad, Geuel son of Machi.

16 These [are] the names of the men whom Moses hath sent to spy the land; and Moses calleth Hoshea son of Nun, Jehoshua.

17 And Moses sendeth them to spy the land of Canaan, and saith unto them, `Go ye up this [way] into the south, and ye have gone up the mountain,

18 and have seen the land what it [is], and the people which is dwelling on it, whether it [is] strong or feeble; whether it [is] few or many;

19 and what the land [is] in which it is dwelling, whether it [is] good or bad; and what [are] the cities in which it is dwelling, whether in camps or in fortresses;

20 And what the land [is], whether it [is] fat or lean; whether there is wood in it or not; and ye have strengthened yourselves, and have taken of the fruit of the land;' and the days [are] days of the first-fruits of grapes.

21 And they go up and spy the land, from the wilderness of Zin unto Rehob at the going in to Hamath;

22 and they go up by the south, and come in unto Hebron, and there [are] Ahiman, Sheshai, and Talmai, children of Anak (and Hebron was built seven years before Zoan in Egypt),

23 and they come in unto the brook of Eshcol, and cut down thence a branch and one cluster of grapes, and they bear it on a staff by two, also [some] of the pomegranates, and of the figs.

24 That place hath [one] called Brook of Eshcol, because of the cluster which the sons of Israel cut from thence.

25 And they turn back from spying the land at the end of forty days.

26 And they go and come in unto Moses, and unto Aaron, and unto all the company of the sons of Israel, unto the wilderness of Paran, to Kadesh; and they bring them and all the company back word, and shew them the fruit of the land.

27 And they recount to him, and say, `We came in unto the land whither thou hast sent us, and also it [is] flowing with milk and honey -- and this [is] its fruit;

28 only, surely the people which is dwelling in the land [is] strong; and the cities are fenced, very great; and also children of Anak we have seen there.

29 Amalek is dwelling in the land of the south, and the Hittite, and the Jebusite, and the Amorite is dwelling in the hill country, and the Canaanite is dwelling by the sea, and by the side of the Jordan.'

30 And Caleb stilleth the people concerning Moses, and saith, `Let us certainly go up -- and we have possessed it; for we are thoroughly able for it.'

31 And the men who have gone up with him said, `We are not able to go up against the people, for it [is] stronger than we;'

32 and they bring out an evil account of the land which they have spied unto the sons of Israel, saying, `The land into which we passed over to spy it, is a land eating up its inhabitants; and all the people whom we saw in its midst [are] men of stature;

33 and there we saw the Nephilim, sons of Anak, of the Nephilim; and we are in our own eyes as grasshoppers; and so we were in their eyes.'

   

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Arcana Coelestia # 581

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581. That 'the Nephilim' means those who, persuaded of their own prominence and superiority, treated everything holy and true as being worthless is clear from what comes before and directly after; that is to say, they immersed matters of doctrine in their own evil desires, which is what is meant by the statement about the sons of God going in to the daughters of man, who bore children to them. Persuasion concerning self and its own delusions also grows as more and more things enter in, till at length that persuasion is inerasable. And when doctrinal matters concerning faith are added as well, utterly persuasive assumptions cause them to treat everything holy and true as being worthless, and they become Nephilim. As has been stated, this set of people who lived before the Flood are such that all spirits are choked to death by their absolutely dreadful delusions which spread from them like a sphere that is poisonous and choking. Spirits are so choked to death by them that they do not know how to think, and as a result feel semi-dead. And unless the Lord by His Coming into the world had freed the world of spirits from so pernicious a set of people, no one could possibly have stayed on there, and so the human race, which the Lord governs by means of spirits, would have perished. Consequently these people are now detained in a hell beneath what looks like a misty solid rock, beneath the heel of the left foot. Nor do they ever try to escape. The world of spirits is accordingly free of that extremely dangerous crew. That crew and the thoroughly poisonous sphere of persuasions from it will in the Lord's Divine mercy be dealt with as a separate subject. 1 These are the people called the Nephilim, and they treat all that is holy and true as being worthless.

[2] Further mention is made of them in the Word, though their descendants were called Anakim and Rephaim. The fact that they were called Anakim is clear in Moses,

The men who explored the land of Canaan said, We saw the Nephilim there, the sons of Anak who were descendants of the Nephilim; and in our own eyes we were like locusts, and so we were in their eyes. Numbers 13:33.

The fact that they were called Rephaim is clear once again in Moses,

The Emim lived formerly in the land of Moab, a people great and many, and tall like the Anakim. The Rephaim were also considered to be as Anakim; and the Moabites called them Emim. Deuteronomy 2:10-11.

The Nephilim are not mentioned again, but the Rephaim are. In the Prophets the description of them fits what has been said about them already, as in Isaiah,

Hell beneath has been stirred up for you, to meet you as you come. He has roused the Rephaim for you. Isaiah 14:9

This refers to the hell where such people are.

In the same prophet,

The dead will not live, the Rephaim will not rise. To that end You have visited and destroyed them, and wiped out all remembrance of them. Isaiah 26:14.

This also refers to that hell of theirs from which they will never rise up again. And in the same prophet,

Your dead will live, my corpse will rise again. Wake up and sing, O inhabitants of the dust. For Your dew is a dew of herbs. But You will cast away the land of the Rephaim. Isaiah 26:19.

'The land of the Rephaim' is that self same hell.

In David,

Will You work a wonder for the dead? Will the Rephaim rise up and confess You? Psalms 88:10.

This similarly refers to that hell of theirs and to the fact that they can never again rise up and contaminate the atmosphere of the world of spirits with the utterly dreadful poison of their persuasions. Provision has been made by the Lord however to prevent the human race ever again being steeped in such dreadful delusions and persuasions. But the people who lived before the Flood were of such a nature and disposition that they were able to be steeped in them, for reasons until now unknown to anybody, which too will in the Lord's Divine mercy be dealt with later on.

Poznámky pod čarou:

1. i.e. in 1265-1272

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