8859. Exodus 20

1. And God spoke all these words, saying,

2. I am Jehovah your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slaves.

3. You shall not have other gods before My face.

4. You shall not make for yourself a graven image, or any likeness [of things] which are in the heavens above, and which are on the earth beneath, and which are in the waters under the earth.

5. You shall not bow down to them, and you shall not serve them; for I am Jehovah your God, a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the sons, ¹ on the third and on the fourth [generations] of those who hate Me,

6. And showing mercy to thousands who love Me and keep My commandments.

7. You shall not take the name of Jehovah your God in vain; for Jehovah will not render him innocent who takes His name in vain.

8. Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy.

9. Six days you shall labour and do all your work;

10. And the seventh day is a sabbath to Jehovah your God. You shall not do any work - you, nor your son, nor your daughter; your male slave, nor your female slave, nor your beast, nor your sojourner who is within your gates.

11. For in six days Jehovah made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day; therefore Jehovah blessed the sabbath day, and sanctified it.

12. Honour your father and your mother, in order that your days may be prolonged on the land which Jehovah your God gives you.

13. ² You shall not kill.

14. You shall not commit adultery.

15. You shall not steal.

16. You shall not answer as witness of a lie against your neighbour.

17. You shall not covet your neighbour's house; you shall not covet your neighbour's wife, nor his male slave nor his female slave, nor his ox nor his ass, nor anything that is your neighbour's.

18. And all the people saw the voices and torches, ³ and the voice of the trumpet, and the mountain smoking; and the people saw and were violently shaken, and stood afar off.

19. And they said to Moses, Speak yourself to us, and we will hear; and do not let God speak to us, lest perhaps we die.

20. And Moses said to the people, Do not fear, for God has come in order to test you, and in order that His fear may be before your faces, so that you do not sin.

21. And the people stood afar off; and Moses drew near the thick darkness where God was.

22. And Jehovah said to Moses, Thus you shall say to the children of Israel, You have seen that I have spoken to you from heaven.

23. You shall not make [to be] with Me gods of silver and gods of gold; you shall not make [them] for yourselves.

24. An altar of soil ⁴ you shall make for Me, and shall sacrifice on it your burnt offerings and your eucharistic offerings, your flocks and your herds; in every place where I shall put the memory of My name I will come to you and bless you.

25. And if you make for Me an altar of stones, you shall not build it with hewn ones; for if you move your chisel over it you will profane it.

26. And you shall not go up to My altar by steps, in order that your nakedness may not be revealed on it.

CONTENTS

This chapter deals in the internal sense with God's truths that are to be implanted in the good which governs those belonging to the Lord's spiritual Church. The Ten Commandments are those truths; and the commandments that follow them in this chapter, regarding sacrifices and the altar, are outward truths concerned with worship.

Notes de bas de page:

6398. 'Dan will be a serpent on the road' means their reasoning regarding truth, since good does not as yet lead them. This is clear from the representation of 'Dan' as those guided by truth but not as yet by good, dealt with above in 6396; from the meaning of 'a serpent' as reasoning based on sensory evidence, dealt with below; and from the meaning of 'the road' as truth, dealt with in 627, 2733. Thus 'Dan is a serpent on the road' means their reasoning regarding truth, since good does not as yet lead them. The nature of that reasoning and the nature of the truth resulting from it will be stated below.

[2] The reason why 'a serpent' means reasoning based on sensory evidence is that the interiors of a person are represented in heaven by living creatures of various kinds, and therefore in the Word similar things are meant by those same creatures. A person's sensory powers have come to be represented by serpents because they are the lowest of his mental powers. Compared with other mental powers those of the senses are on the ground so to speak, crawling around there, as may also be recognized from the forms that sensory impressions adopt when they enter in, which will in the Lord's Divine mercy be dealt with elsewhere. This explains why those sensory powers have come to be represented by 'serpents', so much so that the Lord's Divine sensory perception was represented by the bronze serpent in the wilderness, 4211 (end).

[3] True shrewdness and circumspection - qualities that reveal themselves in external affairs - were also meant by 'serpents', in Matthew,

Be shrewd as serpents and simple as doves. Matthew 10:16.

But in the case of a person who is governed by his senses and is far removed from what is internal - as those people are who are guided by truth but not as yet by good - and who speaks as his senses tell him, 'a serpent' means false reasoning. This therefore is why here, where Dan is the subject, reasoning regarding truth because good does not as yet lead him is meant. In other contexts ill-will, deceitfulness, and trickery are also meant by 'serpents', though in those places they are poisonous serpents - such as vipers and the like - whose reasoning is their poison.

'A serpent' is reasoning based on sensory evidence, see 195-197.

'A serpent' is all evil in general, and evils are distinguished from one another by different kinds of serpents, 251, 254, 257.