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Numbers 18

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1 And Jehovah saith unto Aaron, `Thou, and thy sons, and the house of thy father with thee, do bear the iniquity of the sanctuary; and thou, and thy sons with thee, do bear the iniquity of your priesthood;

2 and also thy brethren, the tribe of Levi, the tribe of thy father, bring near with thee, and they are joined unto thee, and serve thee, even thou and thy sons with thee, before the tent of the testimony.

3 `And they have kept thy charge, and the charge of all the tent; only, unto the vessels of the sanctuary and unto the altar they do not come near, and they die not, either they or you;

4 and they have been joined unto thee, and have kept the charge of the tent of meeting, for all the service of the tent; and a stranger doth not come near unto you;

5 and ye have kept the charge of the sanctuary, and the charge of the altar, and there is no more wrath against the sons of Israel.

6 `And I, lo, I have taken your brethren the Levites from the midst of the sons of Israel; to you a gift they are given by Jehovah, to do the service of the tent of meeting;

7 and thou, and thy sons with thee, do keep your priesthood, for everything of the altar, and within the vail, and ye have served; a service of gift I make your priesthood; and the stranger who is coming near is put to death.'

8 And Jehovah speaketh unto Aaron: `And I, lo, I have given to thee the charge of My heave-offerings, of all the hallowed things of the sons of Israel -- to thee I have given them for the anointing, and to thy sons, by a statute age-during.

9 This is thine of the most holy things, from the fire: all their offering, to all their present, and to all their sin-offering, and to all their guilt-offering, which they give back to Me, is most holy to thee, and to thy sons;

10 in the holy of holies thou dost eat it; every male doth eat it; holy it is to thee.

11 `And this [is] thine: the heave-offering of their gift, to all the wave-offerings of the sons of Israel, to thee I have given them, and to thy sons, and to thy daughters with thee, by a statute age-during; every clean one in thy house doth eat it;

12 all the best of the oil, and all the best of the new wine, and wheat -- their first-[fruits] which they give to Jehovah -- to thee I have given them.

13 `The first-fruits of all that [is] in their land, which they bring in to Jehovah, are thine; every clean one in thy house doth eat it;

14 every devoted thing in Israel is thine,

15 every one opening a womb of all flesh which they bring near to Jehovah, among man and among beast, is thine; only, thou dost certainly ransom the first-born of man, and the firstling of the unclean beast thou dost ransom.

16 `And their ransomed ones from a son of a month, thou dost ransom with thy valuation, of silver, five shekels, by the shekel of the sanctuary, twenty gerahs it [is].

17 `Only, the firstling of a cow, or the firstling of a sheep, or the firstling of a goat, thou dost not ransom, holy they [are]: their blood thou dost sprinkle on the altar, and of their fat thou makest perfume, a fire-offering of sweet fragrance to Jehovah,

18 and their flesh is thine, as the breast of the wave-offering, and as the right leg, it is thine;

19 all the heave-offerings of the holy things which the sons of Israel lift up to Jehovah I have given to thee and to thy sons, and to thy daughters with thee, by a statute age-during, a covenant of salt, age-during it [is] before Jehovah, to thee and to thy seed with thee.'

20 And Jehovah saith unto Aaron, `In their land thou dost not inherit, and a portion thou hast not in their midst: I [am] thy portion, and thine inheritance in the midst of the sons of Israel;

21 and to the sons of Levi, lo, I have given all the tenth in Israel for inheritance in exchange for their service which they are serving -- the service of the tent of meeting.

22 `And the sons of Israel come no more near unto the tent of meeting, to bear sin, to die,

23 and the Levites have done the service of the tent of meeting, and they -- they bear their iniquity; a statute age-during to your generations, that in the midst of the sons of Israel they have no inheritance;

24 but the tithe of the sons of Israel which they lift up to Jehovah, a heave-offering, I have given to the Levites for inheritance; therefore I have said of them, In the midst of the sons of Israel they have no inheritance.'

25 And Jehovah speaketh unto Moses, saying,

26 `And unto the Levites thou dost speak; and thou hast said unto them, When ye take from the sons of Israel the tithe which I have given to you from them, for your inheritance, then ye have lifted up from it the heave-offering of Jehovah, a tithe of the tithe;

27 and your heave-offering hath been reckoned to you as corn from the threshing-floor, and as fulness from the wine-vat;

28 so ye do lift up -- ye also -- the heave-offering of Jehovah from all your tithes which ye receive from the sons of Israel; and ye have given from it the heave-offering of Jehovah to Aaron the priest;

29 out of all your gifts ye do lift up the whole heave-offering of Jehovah; out of all its fat, -- its hallowed part -- out of it.

30 `And thou hast said unto them, In your lifting up its fat out of it, then it hath been reckoned to the Levites, as increase of a threshing-floor, and as increase of a wine-vat;

31 and ye have eaten it in every place, ye and your households, for it [is] your hire in exchange for your service in the tent of meeting;

32 and ye bear no sin for it, in your lifting up its fat out of it, and the holy things of the sons of Israel ye do not pollute, and ye die not.'

   

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Apocalypse Revealed # 782

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782. 18:14 "The fruits that your soul longed for have gone from you, and all things rich and splendid have gone from you, and you shall find them no more at all." This symbolically means that all the blessings and felicities of heaven, including the external ones they wish for, will altogether fly away and be seen no longer, because these Roman Catholics do not have in them any celestial or spiritual affections for goodness and truth.

Fruits that the soul longs for symbolize nothing else than the blessings and felicities of heaven, because those are the fruits of everything having to do with the doctrine and worship that are the subject here, and because they are what people desire when they are dying, and also what they continue to desire when they first come into the spiritual world.

Things rich and splendid symbolize celestial and spiritual affections for goodness and truth - rich things affections for goodness, as we will show below, and splendid things affections for truth, which are called splendid because they develop in response to the light of heaven and its splendor in human minds, giving rise to an understanding of goodness and truth and so to wisdom.

To go and not be found anymore means symbolically that the blessings and felicities of heaven will fly away and be seen no longer, because the people here do not have any celestial or spiritual goodness and truth. Moreover, the blessings and felicities that they long for are called external, because the only blessings and felicities and affections that they long for are carnal and worldly ones, and consequently they are incapable of knowing the nature and character of the blessings and felicities that are called celestial and spiritual.

[2] But we will illustrate this by disclosing the lot of those people after death. When people impelled by a love of dominion from a love of self and so by a love of the world come from that religion into the spiritual world, as they do immediately after death, they all yearn for nothing else than dominion and the pleasures of the heart resulting from that dominion, and the pleasures of the body resulting from wealth. For a person's reigning love with its affections or lusts and desires awaits everyone after death. However, because a love of exercising dominion, springing from a love of self, over the sanctities of the church and heaven, all of which are Divine and the Lord's, is diabolical, therefore after a period of time these people are separated from their companions and cast down into various hells.

But even so, because in consequence of their religion they have participated in an external worship of God, they are first taught the nature and character of heaven, and the nature and character of the happiness of eternal life, that its blessings are pure blessings flowing in from the Lord into everyone in heaven in accordance with the character of the heavenly affection for goodness and truth in them. Yet because they have not turned to the Lord and so have not been conjoined with Him, and also lack any such affection for goodness and truth, they reject that instruction and turn away, and long for the pleasures of the love of self and the world then, which are merely natural and carnal. But because it is inherent in those pleasures to do evil, especially to people who worship the Lord, thus to angels in heaven, therefore they are deprived of those pleasures also and are thrust among their comrades in infernal workhouses in a contemptible and wretched state.

Still, these events befall them to the degree of their love of dominion over things that are Divine and the Lord's, which is the degree to which they rejected the Lord.

[3] It can now be seen from this that "the fruits that your soul longed for have gone from you, and all things rich and splendid have gone from you, and you shall find them no more at all," symbolically means that all the blessings and felicities of heaven, including the external ones they wish for, will altogether fly away and be seen no longer, because these Roman Catholics do not have in them any affections for goodness and truth.

That rich things 1 symbolize heavenly goods, and also affections for those goods and the delights of those affections, can be seen from the following passages:

Listen... to Me, eat what is good, that your soul may delight itself in richness. (Isaiah 55:2)

I will fill the soul of the priests with richness, and My people shall be satisfied with... goodness... (Jeremiah 31:14)

My soul shall be satisfied... with fatness and richness, and my mouth shall praise with singing lips. (Psalms 63:5)

They are filled with the richness of Your house, and You give them drink from the river of Your delights. (Psalms 36:8)

On this mountain Jehovah... will make for all people a feast of rich food..., of rich food full of marrow... (Isaiah 25:6)

They shall still have produce in old age; they shall be rich and green, to declare that Jehovah is upright. (Psalms 92:14-15)

(In the feast that Jehovah will make) you shall eat rich food till you are full, and drink blood till you are drunk... (Ezekiel 39:19)

(Jehovah) will regard your burnt offering as rich. (Psalms 20:3)

Because richness of fat symbolizes heavenly goodness, it was therefore a statute in Israel that all the fat of sacrificial animals should be burnt on the altar (Exodus 29:13, 22; Leviticus 1:8; 3:3-16; 4:8-35; 7:3-4, 30-31; 17:6).

In an opposite sense, the richness of fat symbolizes people who are nauseated at goodness, and who, because it is just too much, scorn it and reject it (Deuteronomy 32:15; Jeremiah 5:28; 50:11; Psalms 17:10; 20:3; 78:31; 119:70; and elsewhere).

Poznámky pod čarou:

1. Literally, "fat things." The original words in Hebrew and Greek, translated here as "rich" or "richness," mean literally "fat" or "fatness," but metaphorically "rich" or "richness."

  
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Many thanks to the General Church of the New Jerusalem, and to Rev. N.B. Rogers, translator, for the permission to use this translation.