Die Bibel

 

Genesis 35

Lernen

   

1 In the meantime God said to Jacob: Arise, and go up to Bethel, and dwell there, and make there an altar to God, who appeared to thee when thou didst flee from Esau thy brother.

2 And Jacob having called together all his household, said: Cast away the strange gods that are among you, and be cleansed and change your garments.

3 Arise, and let us go up to Bethel, that we may make there an altar to God: who heard me in the day of my affliction, and accompanied me in my journey.

4 So they gave him all the strange gods they had, and the earrings which were in their ears: and he buried them under the turpentine tree, that is behind the city of Sichem.

5 And when they were departed, the terror of God fell upon all the cities round about, and they durst not pursue after them as they went away.

6 And Jacob came to Luza, which is in the land of Chanaan, surnamed Bethel: he and all the people that were with him.

7 And he built there an altar, and called the name of that place, The house of God: for there God appeared to him when he fled from his brother.

8 At the same time Debora the nurse of Rebecca died, and was buried at the foot of Bethel under an oak: and the name of that place was called, The oak of weeping.

9 And God appeared again to Jacob, after he returned from Mesopotamia of Syria, and he blessed him,

10 Saying: Thou shalt not be called any more Jacob, but Israel shall be thy name. And he called him Israel.

11 And said to him: I am God Almighty, increase thou and be multiplied. Nations and peoples of Nations shall be from thee, and kings shall come out of thy loins.

12 And the land which I gave to Abraham and Isaac, I will give to thee, and to thy seed after thee.

13 And he departed from him.

14 But he set up a monument of stone, in the place where God had spoken to him: pouring drink offerings upon it, and pouring oil thereon:

15 And calling the name of that place Bethel.

16 And going forth from thence, he came in the springtime to the land which leadeth to Ephrata: wherein when Rachel was in travail,

17 By reason of her hard labor she began to be in danger, and the midwife said to her: Fear not, for thou shalt have this son also.

18 And when her soul was departing for pain, and death was now at hand, she called the name of her son Benoni, that is, The son of my pain: but his father called him Benjamin, that is, The son of the right hand.

19 So Rachel died, and was buried in the highway that leadeth to Ephrata, that is Bethlehem.

20 And Jacob erected a pillar over her sepulcher: this is the pillar of Rachel's monument, to this day.

21 Departing thence, he pitched his tent beyond the Flock tower.

22 And when he dwelt in that country, Ruben went, and slept with Bala, the concubine of his father: which he was not ignorant of. Now the sons of Jacob were twelve.

23 The sons of Lia: Ruben the firstborn, and Simeon, and Levi, and Juda, and Issachar, and Zebulon.

24 The sons of Rachel: Joseph and Benjamin.

25 The sons of Bala, Rachel's handmaid: Dan and Naphthali.

26 The sons of Zelpha, Lia's handmaid: Gad and Aser: these are the sons of Jacob, that were born to him in Mesopotamia of Syria.

27 And he came to Isaac his father in Mambre, the city of Arbee, this is Hebron: Wherein Abraham and Isaac sojourned.

28 And the days of Isaac were a hundred and eighty years.

29 And being spent with age he died, and was gathered to his people, being old and full of days: and his sons Esau and Jacob buried him.

   

Kommentar

 

Abraham

  
Représentation d'Abraham, by Joseph Villiet

Abraham (or Abram, as he was named in the beginning of his story) was the ancestor of all the Children of Israel, through his son Isaac, and of the Arabs, through his son Ishmael.

Abraham represents the Divine good or love. His story foreshadows the life of Jesus, and our spiritual lives, too.

His life can be usefully seen as being divided into three periods. The first period includes the unknown early years from his birth in Ur, and his later move to Haran with his father Terah. The second section starts with Abram's being called by Jehovah to go to Canaan. It includes the adventures he had there, and continues until the events of the 17th chapter of Genesis where he is said to be 99 years old, rich, and powerful - but without a son by his wife Sarai. Once again the Lord appears to him, promises that his progeny will become a great nation, institutes the rite of circumcision, and changes his name to Abraham, adding the "ah" sound from Jehovah. The third and last period of his life sees the birth of Isaac, the death of Sarah (whose name was also changed), and the finding of a wife for Isaac from among Abraham's relatives back in Mesopotamia. Abraham is said to be 175 years old when he dies, as recorded in the 25th chapter of Genesis.

What we are here interested in is the deep representation of Abraham because he prophesies or foreshadows the inmost part of Jesus' life after He is born to Mary centuries after the man Abraham lived on the earth. Abraham represents the Divine good or love. The internal sense of the Word tells us that God himself provided the life into an ovum within Mary, so she could provide a natural body and a natural heredity from the Jewish religion, while the soul of Jesus was kept as a direct possessor of divine life. During Jesus' early life, probably up to adolescence, Jesus lived out those representative actions of Abraham in the innermost parts of his mind and spirit. Abraham as he pastured his sheep and ran his large household had no idea at all that this was true, and early in Jesus' life He didn't realize it either. There must have been perceptions as Jesus grew up, witness his visit to the temple when He was 12, but not a complete understanding until He was fully grown. And further, it isn't only Abraham. When Abraham dies, the representation attaches to Isaac, who represents the rational level of the mind, and then to both Jacob and Esau who represent the natural mind as to truth and good in the mind respectively. And then the trials of the twelve tribes, the kings, and all the sayings of the prophets become that same representation. So Jesus could say to the two disciples that He met on the road to Emmaus, "O fools and slow of heart... and beginning at Moses and all the Prophets He expounded to them in all the scriptures all the things concerning Himself." (The following references are chronologic as Abraham gets older, and are in biblical sequence.) And furthermore, the progress of mental and spiritual life in each one of us is a dim and finite image of that represented by Abraham's life if, that is, we are trying to follow the Lord's laws and precepts to love one another. We too have within us a journey to the land of Canaan, a hardworking sojourn in Egypt, a struggle in the wilderness, and a Saul, a David, and an Ahab. We have our home-grown Amalekites and Philistines. The whole of the Old Testament is a picture of how our spiritual life works.

In Genesis 20:7, Abraham signifies celestial truth, or doctrine from a celestial origin. (Arcana Coelestia 2533)

In Genesis 12:4, As ABRAHAM he represents the Lord as to His Human and Divine Essence; as ABRAM he represents the Lord as to His human essence only. (Arcana Coelestia 1426)

In Genesis 17:5, The name was changed by adding the letter H, so that the Divine Human could he represented, for H is the only letter which involves the Divine: it means I AM, or BEING. (Arcana Coelestia 1416[2])

(Verweise: Genesis 17, 25)