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Exodus 14

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1 And the Lord said to Moses,

2 Give orders to the children of Israel to go back and put up their tents before Pi-hahiroth, between Migdol and the sea, in front of Baal-zephon, opposite to which you are to put up your tents by the sea.

3 And Pharaoh will say of the children of Israel, They are wandering without direction, they are shut in by the waste land.

4 And I will make Pharaoh's heart hard, and he will come after them and I will be honoured over Pharaoh and all his army, so that the Egyptians may see that I am the Lord. And they did so.

5 And word came to Pharaoh of the flight of the people: and the feeling of Pharaoh and of his servants about the people was changed, and they said, Why have we let Israel go, so that they will do no more work for us?

6 So he had his war-carriage made ready and took his people with him:

7 And he took six hundred carriages, all the carriages of Egypt, and captains over all of them.

8 And the Lord made the heart of Pharaoh hard, and he went after the children of Israel: for the children of Israel had gone out without fear.

9 But the Egyptians went after them, all the horses and carriages of Pharaoh, and his horsemen, and his army, and overtook them in their tents by the sea, by Pihahiroth, before Baal-zephon.

10 And when Pharaoh came near, the children of Israel, lifting up their eyes, saw the Egyptians coming after them, and were full of fear; and their cry went up to God.

11 And they said to Moses, Was there no resting-place for the dead in Egypt, that you have taken us away to come to our death in the waste land? why have you taken us out of Egypt?

12 Did we not say to you in Egypt, Let us be as we are, working for the Egyptians? for it is better to be the servants of the Egyptians than to come to our death in the waste land.

13 But Moses said, Keep where you are and have no fear; now you will see the salvation of the Lord which he will give you today; for the Egyptians whom you see today you will never see again.

14 The Lord will make war for you, you have only to keep quiet.

15 And the Lord said to Moses, Why are you crying out to me? give the children of Israel the order to go forward.

16 And let your rod be lifted up and your hand stretched out over the sea, and it will be parted in two; and the children of Israel will go through on dry land.

17 And I will make the heart of the Egyptians hard, and they will go in after them: and I will be honoured over Pharaoh and over his army, his war-carriages, and his horsemen.

18 And the Egyptians will see that I am the Lord, when I get honour over Pharaoh and his war-carriages and his horsemen.

19 Then the angel of God, who had been before the tents of Israel, took his place at their back; and the pillar of cloud, moving from before them, came to rest at their back:

20 And it came between the army of Egypt and the army of Israel; and there was a dark cloud between them, and they went on through the night; but the one army came no nearer to the other all the night.

21 And when Moses' hand was stretched out over the sea, the Lord with a strong east wind made the sea go back all night, and the waters were parted in two and the sea became dry land.

22 And the children of Israel went through the sea on dry land: and the waters were a wall on their right side and on their left.

23 Then the Egyptians went after them into the middle of the sea, all Pharaoh's horses and his war-carriages and his horsemen.

24 And in the morning watch, the Lord, looking out on the armies of the Egyptians from the pillar of fire and cloud, sent trouble on the army of the Egyptians;

25 And made the wheels of their war-carriages stiff, so that they had hard work driving them: so the Egyptians said, Let us go in flight from before the face of Israel, for the Lord is fighting for them against the Egyptians.

26 And the Lord said to Moses, Let your hand be stretched out over the sea, and the waters will come back again on the Egyptians, and on their war-carriages and on their horsemen.

27 And when Moses' hand was stretched out over the sea, at dawn the sea came flowing back, meeting the Egyptians in their flight, and the Lord sent destruction on the Egyptians in the middle of the sea.

28 And the waters came back, covering the war-carriages and the horsemen and all the army of Pharaoh which went after them into the middle of the sea; not one of them was to be seen.

29 But the children of Israel went through the sea walking on dry land, and the waters were a wall on their right side and on their left.

30 So that day the Lord gave Israel salvation from the hands of the Egyptians; and Israel saw the Egyptians dead on the sea's edge.

31 And Israel saw the great work which the Lord had done against the Egyptians, and the fear of the Lord came on the people and they had faith in the Lord and in his servant Moses.

   

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Jacob or Israel (the man)

  

Jacob is told twice that his name will now be Israel. The first time is when he wrestles with an angel on his journey to meet Esau, and the angel tells him that his name will be changed. After he is reconciled with Esau, they go their separate ways. Jacob moves to Shechem and then on to Bethel, where he builds an altar to the Lord. The Lord appears to him there, renews the covenant He first made with Abraham and again tells him that his name will be Israel (Genesis 35). The story goes on to tell of Benjamin's birth and Rachel's death in bearing him, and then of Jacob's return to Isaac and Isaac's death and burial. But at that point the main thread of the story leaves Israel and turns to Joseph, and Israel is hardly mentioned until after Joseph has risen to power in Egypt, has revealed himself to his brothers and tells them to bring all of their father's household down to Egypt. There, before Israel dies, he blesses Joseph's sons, plus all his own sons. After his death he is returned to the land of Canaan for burial in Abraham's tomb. In the story of Jacob and Esau, Jacob represents truth, and Esau good. Jacob's stay in Padan-Aram, and the wealth he acquired there, represent learning the truths of scripture, just as we learn when we read the Ten Commandments or the Sermon on the Mount. The change of name from Jacob to Israel represents the realization that what we learn should not simply be knowledge, but should be the rules of our life, to be followed by action. This action is the good that Esau has represented in the story up to that time, but after the reconciliation between Jacob and Esau, Jacob as Israel now represents the truth and the good, together. It is interesting that even after his name change Jacob is rarely called Israel. Sometimes he is called one and sometimes the other, and sometimes he is called both Jacob and Israel in the same verse (Genesis 46:2, 5, & 8 also Psalm 14:7). This is because Jacob represents the external person and Israel the internal person, and even after the internal person comes into being, we spend much of our lives living on the external level.

(références: Arcana Coelestia 4274, 4292, 4570, 5595, 6225, 6256, Genesis 2:5, 46:8)

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Genesis 46

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1 Israel traveled with all that he had, and came to Beersheba, and offered sacrifices to the God of his father, Isaac.

2 God spoke to Israel in the visions of the night, and said, "Jacob, Jacob!" He said, "Here I am."

3 He said, "I am God, the God of your father. Don't be afraid to go down into Egypt, for there I will make of you a great nation.

4 I will go down with you into Egypt. I will also surely bring you up again. Joseph will close your eyes."

5 Jacob rose up from Beersheba, and the sons of Israel carried Jacob, their father, their little ones, and their wives, in the wagons which Pharaoh had sent to carry him.

6 They took their livestock, and their goods, which they had gotten in the land of Canaan, and came into Egypt--Jacob, and all his seed with him,

7 his sons, and his sons' sons with him, his daughters, and his sons' daughters, and he brought all his seed with him into Egypt.

8 These are the names of the children of Israel, who came into Egypt, Jacob and his sons: Reuben, Jacob's firstborn.

9 The sons of Reuben: Hanoch, Pallu, Hezron, and Carmi.

10 The sons of Simeon: Jemuel, Jamin, Ohad, Jachin, Zohar, and Shaul the son of a Canaanite woman.

11 The sons of Levi: Gershon, Kohath, and Merari.

12 The sons of Judah: Er, Onan, Shelah, Perez, and Zerah; but Er and Onan died in the land of Canaan. The sons of Perez were Hezron and Hamul.

13 The sons of Issachar: Tola, Puvah, Iob, and Shimron.

14 The sons of Zebulun: Sered, Elon, and Jahleel.

15 These are the sons of Leah, whom she bore to Jacob in Paddan Aram, with his daughter Dinah. All the souls of his sons and his daughters were thirty-three.

16 The sons of Gad: Ziphion, Haggi, Shuni, Ezbon, Eri, Arodi, and Areli.

17 The sons of Asher: Imnah, Ishvah, Ishvi, Beriah, and Serah their sister. The sons of Beriah: Heber and Malchiel.

18 These are the sons of Zilpah, whom Laban gave to Leah, his daughter, and these she bore to Jacob, even sixteen souls.

19 The sons of Rachel, Jacob's wife: Joseph and Benjamin.

20 To Joseph in the land of Egypt were born Manasseh and Ephraim, whom Asenath, the daughter of Potiphera, priest of On, bore to him.

21 The sons of Benjamin: Bela, Becher, Ashbel, Gera, Naaman, Ehi, Rosh, Muppim, Huppim, and Ard.

22 These are the sons of Rachel, who were born to Jacob: all the souls were fourteen.

23 The son of Dan: Hushim.

24 The sons of Naphtali: Jahzeel, Guni, Jezer, and Shillem.

25 These are the sons of Bilhah, whom Laban gave to Rachel, his daughter, and these she bore to Jacob: all the souls were seven.

26 All the souls who came with Jacob into Egypt, who were his direct descendants, besides Jacob's sons' wives, all the souls were sixty-six.

27 The sons of Joseph, who were born to him in Egypt, were two souls. All the souls of the house of Jacob, who came into Egypt, were seventy.

28 He sent Judah before him to Joseph, to show the way before him to Goshen, and they came into the land of Goshen.

29 Joseph prepared his chariot, and went up to meet Israel, his father, in Goshen. He presented himself to him, and fell on his neck, and wept on his neck a good while.

30 Israel said to Joseph, "Now let me die, since I have seen your face, that you are still alive."

31 Joseph said to his brothers, and to his father's house, "I will go up, and speak with Pharaoh, and will tell him, 'My brothers, and my father's house, who were in the land of Canaan, have come to me.

32 These men are shepherds, for they have been keepers of livestock, and they have brought their flocks, and their herds, and all that they have.'

33 It will happen, when Pharaoh summons you, and will say, 'What is your occupation?'

34 that you shall say, 'Your servants have been keepers of livestock from our youth even until now, both we, and our fathers:' that you may dwell in the land of Goshen; for every shepherd is an abomination to the Egyptians."