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Genesis 34

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1 Now Dinah, the daughter whom Leah had by Jacob, went out to see the women of that country.

2 And when Shechem, the son of Hamor the Hivite who was the chief of that land, saw her, he took her by force and had connection with her.

3 Then his heart went out in love to Dinah, the daughter of Jacob, and he said comforting words to her.

4 And Shechem said to Hamor, his father, Get me this girl for my wife.

5 Now Jacob had word of what Shechem had done to his daughter; but his sons were in the fields with the cattle, and Jacob said nothing till they came.

6 Then Hamor, the father of Shechem, came out to have a talk with Jacob.

7 Now the sons of Jacob came in from the fields when they had news of it, and they were wounded and very angry because of the shame he had done in Israel by having connection with Jacob's daughter; and they said, Such a thing is not to be done.

8 But Hamor said to them, Shechem, my son, is full of desire for your daughter: will you then give her to him for a wife?

9 And let our two peoples be joined together; give your daughters to us, and take our daughters for yourselves.

10 Go on living with us, and the country will be open to you; do trade and get property there.

11 And Shechem said to her father and her brothers, If you will give ear to my request, whatever you say I will give to you.

12 However great you make the bride-price and payment, I will give it; only let me have the girl for my wife.

13 But the sons of Jacob gave a false answer to Shechem and Hamor his father, because of what had been done to Dinah their sister.

14 And they said, It is not possible for us to give our sister to one who is without circumcision, for that would be a cause of shame to us:

15 But on this condition only will we come to an agreement with you: if every male among you becomes like us and undergoes circumcision;

16 Then we will give our daughters to you and take your daughters to us and go on living with you as one people.

17 But if you will not undergo circumcision as we say, then we will take our daughter and go.

18 And their words were pleasing to Hamor and his son Shechem.

19 And without loss of time the young man did as they said, because he had delight in Jacob's daughter, and he was the noblest of his father's house.

20 Then Hamor and Shechem, his son, went to the meeting-place of their town, and said to the men of the town,

21 It is the desire of these men to be at peace with us; let them then go on living in this country and doing trade here, for the country is wide open before them; let us take their daughters as wives and let us give them our daughters.

22 But these men will make an agreement with us to go on living with us and to become one people, only on the condition that every male among us undergoes circumcision as they have done.

23 Then will not their cattle and their goods and all their beasts be ours? so let us come to an agreement with them so that they may go on living with us.

24 Then all the men of the town gave ear to the words of Hamor and Shechem his son; and every male in the town underwent circumcision.

25 But on the third day after, before the wounds were well, two of the sons of Jacob, Simeon and Levi, Dinah's brothers, took their swords and came into the town by surprise and put all the males to death.

26 And Hamor and his son they put to death with the sword, and they took Dinah from Shechem's house and went away.

27 And the sons of Jacob came on them when they were wounded and made waste the town because of what had been done to their sister;

28 They took their flocks and their herds and their asses and everything in their town and in their fields,

29 And all their wealth and all their little ones and their wives; everything in their houses they took and made them waste.

30 And Jacob said to Simeon and Levi, You have made trouble for me and given me a bad name among the people of this country, among the Canaanites and the Perizzites: and because we are small in number they will come together against me and make war on me; and it will be the end of me and all my people.

31 But they said, Were we to let him make use of our sister as a loose woman?

   

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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.

Fußnoten:

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.