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Genesis 22

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1 Now after these things, God put Abraham to the test, and said to him, Abraham; and he said, Here am I.

2 And he said to him, Take your son, your dearly loved only son Isaac, and go to the land of Moriah and give him as a burned offering on one of the mountains of which I will give you knowledge.

3 And Abraham got up early in the morning, and made ready his ass, and took with him two of his young men and Isaac, his son, and after the wood for the burned offering had been cut, he went on his way to the place of which God had given him word.

4 And on the third day, Abraham, lifting up his eyes, saw the place a long way off.

5 Then he said to his young men, Keep here with the ass; and I and the boy will go on and give worship and come back again to you.

6 And Abraham put the wood for the burned offering on his son's back, and he himself took the fire and the knife in his hand, and the two of them went on together.

7 Then Isaac said to Abraham, My father; and he said, Here am I, my son. And he said, We have wood and fire here, but where is the lamb for the burned offering?

8 And Abraham said, God himself will give the lamb for the burned offering: so they went on together.

9 And they came to the place of which God had given him knowledge; and there Abraham made the altar and put the wood in place on it, and having made tight the bands round Isaac his son, he put him on the wood on the altar.

10 And stretching out his hand, Abraham took the knife to put his son to death.

11 But the voice of the angel of the Lord came from heaven, saying, Abraham, Abraham: and he said, Here am I.

12 And he said, Let not your hand be stretched out against the boy to do anything to him; for now I am certain that the fear of God is in your heart, because you have not kept back your son, your only son, from me.

13 And lifting up his eyes, Abraham saw a sheep fixed by its horns in the brushwood: and Abraham took the sheep and made a burned offering of it in place of his son.

14 And Abraham gave that place the name Yahweh-yireh: as it is said to this day, In the mountain the Lord is seen.

15 And the voice of the angel of the Lord came to Abraham a second time from heaven,

16 Saying, I have taken an oath by my name, says the Lord, because you have done this and have not kept back from me your dearly loved only son,

17 That I will certainly give you my blessing, and your seed will be increased like the stars of heaven and the sand by the seaside; your seed will take the land of those who are against them;

18 And your seed will be a blessing to all the nations of the earth, because you have done what I gave you orders to do.

19 Then Abraham went back to his young men and they went together to Beer-sheba, the place where Abraham was living.

20 After these things, Abraham had news that Milcah, the wife of his brother Nahor, had given birth to children;

21 Uz the oldest, and Buz his brother, and Kemuel, the father of Aram,

22 And Chesed and Hazo and Pildash and Jidlaph and Bethuel.

23 Bethuel was the father of Rebekah: these eight were the children of Milcah and Nahor, Abraham's brother.

24 And his servant Reumah gave birth to Tebah and Gaham and Tahash and Maacah.

   

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Arcana Coelestia #2973

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2973. That was in all the border thereof round about. That this signifies exterior knowledges, is evident from the signification of “borders” and of “round about,” as being things which are exterior (of which above, n. 2936); so that here the “tree that was in the border round about” signifies exterior knowledges. Exterior knowledges are those of the ritual and doctrinal things that are the externals of the church; but interior knowledges are those of the doctrinal things that are the internals of the church. What the externals of the church are, and what the internal, has already been repeatedly stated.

[2] Moreover in various places in the Word mention is made of the “midst” and of that which is “round about;” as when speaking of the land of Canaan, that was called the “midst” where were Zion and Jerusalem, but the country “round about” was where the surrounding nations were. By the “land of Canaan” was represented the kingdom of the Lord; its celestial by “Zion,” and its spiritual by “Jerusalem,” where was the dwelling place of Jehovah or the Lord. The country “round about,” even to the borders, represented the celestial and spiritual things flowing forth in their order and derived therefrom; and in the furthest boundaries the representatives of celestial and spiritual things ceased. These representatives had their origin from those in the Lord’s kingdom in the heavens; there the Lord as a Sun is in the midst; from this is all celestial flame and spiritual light; they who are nearest are in the highest light, but they who are more remote are in less light, and they who are most remote are in the least; and there are the boundaries, and hell begins, which is outside of heaven.

[3] With celestial flame and spiritual light the case is this: The celestial things of innocence and love, and the spiritual things of charity and faith, are in the like ratio as are the heat and light the angels have; for all the heat and light in the heavens are therefrom. It is from this therefore that the “midst” signifies the inmost, and the circumference signifies the outermost, and the things which proceed in order from the inmost to the outermost are in such degrees of innocence, love, and charity as is their distance from the center. And so it is in every heavenly society; they who are in the midst are the best of that kind, and the love and charity of that kind decreases with them according to their remoteness from the center; that is, it decreases with those who are at a distance from the center, in proportion to the distance.

[4] The case is the like with man; his inmost is where the Lord dwells with him, and from this inmost governs the things which are round about. When man suffers the Lord to dispose the things round about to correspondence with the inmost ones, then man is in such a state that he can be received into heaven; and then the inmost, the interior, and the external things act as one; but when man does not suffer the Lord to dispose the things round about to correspondence, then he recedes from heaven in the measure in which he does not suffer it. That the soul of man is in the midst, or in his inmost, and that the body is round about or in the outmosts, is well known; for it is the body that encompasses and invests his soul or his spirit.

[5] With those who are in celestial and spiritual love, good from the Lord flows in through the soul into the body, and thence the body becomes full of light; but with those who are in bodily and worldly love, good from the Lord cannot flow in through the soul into the body, but their interiors are in darkness; whence also the body becomes full of darkness, according to what the Lord teaches in Matthew:

The lamp of the body is the eye; if the eye be single, the whole body is full of light; but if the eye be evil, the whole body is full of darkness. If therefore the light be darkness, how great is the darkness (Matthew 6:22-23);

by the “eye” is signified the intellectual which belongs to the soul (n. 2701).

[6] But the case is worse still with those whose interiors are darkness, and whose exteriors appear as full of light. These are such as outwardly counterfeit angels of light, but are devils inwardly, and they are called “Babel;” and when with such persons the things that are “round about” are destroyed, they are carried headlong into hell. These things were represented by the city Jericho, in that its walls fell and the city was given to the curse when the priests had gone about it seven times, and had sounded the trumpets (Joshua 6:1-17). They are meant also in Jeremiah:

Set yourselves in array against Babel round about, all ye that bend the bow; sound the trumpet against her round about; she hath given her hand; her foundations are fallen; her walls are thrown down (Jeremiah 50:14-15).

It is now plain what “round about” means. Moreover in the Word mention is sometimes made of that which is “round about” (as Jeremiah 21:14; 46:14, 49:5; Ezekiel 36:3-4, 36:7; 37:21; Amos 3:11; and elsewhere), and by the things “round about” are signified those which are exterior; concerning which, of the Lord’s Divine mercy more elsewhere.

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