La Bibbia

 

Exodus 34

Studio

   

1 And Jehovah said unto Moses, Hew thee two tables of stone like unto the first: and I will write upon the tables the words that were on the first tables, which thou brakest.

2 And be ready by the morning, and come up in the morning unto mount Sinai, and present thyself there to me on the top of the mount.

3 And no man shall come up with thee; neither let any man be seen throughout all the mount; neither let the flocks nor herds feed before that mount.

4 And he hewed two tables of stone like unto the first; and Moses rose up early in the morning, and went up unto mount Sinai, as Jehovah had commanded him, and took in his hand two tables of stone.

5 And Jehovah descended in the cloud, and stood with him there, and proclaimed the name of Jehovah.

6 And Jehovah passed by before him, and proclaimed, Jehovah, Jehovah, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abundant in lovingkindness and truth,

7 keeping lovingkindness for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin; and that will by no means clear [the guilty], visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, and upon the children's children, upon the third and upon the fourth generation.

8 And Moses made haste, and bowed his head toward the earth, and worshipped.

9 And he said, If now I have found favor in thy sight, O Lord, let the Lord, I pray thee, go in the midst of us; for it is a stiffnecked people; and pardon our iniquity and our sin, and take us for thine inheritance.

10 And he said, Behold, I make a covenant: before all thy people I will do marvels, such as have not been wrought in all the earth, nor in any nation; and all the people among which thou art shall see the work of Jehovah; for it is a terrible thing that I do with thee.

11 Observe thou that which I command thee this day: behold, I drive out before thee the Amorite, and the Canaanite, and the Hittite, and the Perizzite, and the Hivite, and the Jebusite.

12 Take heed to thyself, lest thou make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land whither thou goest, lest it be for a snare in the midst of thee:

13 but ye shall break down their altars, and dash in pieces their pillars, and ye shall cut down their Asherim;

14 for thou shalt worship no other god: for Jehovah, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God:

15 lest thou make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land, and they play the harlot after their gods, and sacrifice unto their gods, and one call thee and thou eat of his sacrifice;

16 and thou take of their daughters unto thy sons, and their daughters play the harlot after their gods, and make thy sons play the harlot after their gods.

17 Thou shalt make thee no molten gods.

18 The feast of unleavened bread shalt thou keep. Seven days thou shalt eat unleavened bread, as I commanded thee, at the time appointed in the month Abib; for in the month Abib thou camest out from Egypt.

19 All that openeth the womb is mine; and all thy cattle that is male, the firstlings of cow and sheep.

20 And the firstling of an ass thou shalt redeem with a lamb: and if thou wilt not redeem it, then thou shalt break its neck. All the first-born of thy sons thou shalt redeem. And none shall appear before me empty.

21 Six days thou shalt work, but on the seventh day thou shalt rest: in plowing time and in harvest thou shalt rest.

22 And thou shalt observe the feast of weeks, [even] of the first-fruits of wheat harvest, and the feast of ingathering at the year's end.

23 Three times in the year shall all thy males appear before the Lord Jehovah, the God of Israel.

24 For I will cast out nations before thee, and enlarge thy borders: neither shall any man desire thy land, when thou goest up to appear before Jehovah thy God three times in the year.

25 Thou shalt not offer the blood of my sacrifice with leavened bread; neither shall the sacrifice of the feast of the passover be left unto the morning.

26 The first of the first-fruits of thy ground thou shalt bring unto the house of Jehovah thy God. Thou shalt not boil a kid in its mother's milk.

27 And Jehovah said unto Moses, Write thou these words: for after the tenor of these words I have made a covenant with thee and with Israel.

28 And he was there with Jehovah forty days and forty nights; he did neither eat bread, nor drink water. And he wrote upon the tables the words of the covenant, the ten commandments.

29 And it came to pass, when Moses came down from mount Sinai with the two tables of the testimony in Moses' hand, when he came down from the mount, that Moses knew not that the skin of his face shone by reason of his speaking with him.

30 And when Aaron and all the children of Israel saw Moses, behold, the skin of his face shone; and they were afraid to come nigh him.

31 And Moses called unto them; and Aaron and all the rulers of the congregation returned unto him: and Moses spake to them.

32 And afterward all the children of Israel came nigh: and he gave them in commandment all that Jehovah had spoken with him in mount Sinai.

33 And when Moses had done speaking with them, he put a veil on his face.

34 But when Moses went in before Jehovah to speak with him, he took the veil off, until he came out; and he came out, and spake unto the children of Israel that which he was commanded.

35 And the children of Israel saw the face of Moses, that the skin of Moses' face shone: and Moses put the veil upon his face again, until he went in to speak with him.

   

Dalle opere di Swedenborg

 

Arcana Coelestia #10623

Studia questo passo

  
/ 10837  
  

10623. 'Visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the sons and on the sons of sons' means the rejection and condemnation of evils and of a long line of falsities arising from them. This is clear from the meaning of 'visiting' as the casting out and condemnation of evils, dealt with below; from the meaning of 'the fathers' as forms of good, and in the contrary sense evils, dealt with in 3703, 5902, 6050, 10490; and from the meaning of 'the sons' as truths, and in the contrary sense falsities, dealt with in 1147, 10490, so that 'the sons of sons' means a long line of falsities arising from evils. By the casting out and condemnation of evils and of the falsities arising from them the casting out and condemnation of those ruled by such evils and falsities should be understood; for evils and falsities have no existence other than within their subjects 1 , that is, within people. It should be recognized that the falsities of evil are meant by 'the sons' because the fathers from whom they spring mean evils. What falsities of evil and falsities not of evil are, see in the places referred to in 10109.

[2] A person unacquainted with the internal sense of the Word may easily be led to believe that Jehovah visits the iniquity of the fathers on the sons and on the sons of sons, consequently that the sons are going to pay the penalty for their fathers' evils. But this is not the meaning of those words, as is plainly evident from the Divine law that fathers shall not die because of sons, nor sons because of fathers, but each because of his own evil, Deuteronomy 24:16. From this law it is evident that those words are to be understood differently from their literal meaning. The fact that those who are ruled by evils and the long line of falsities arising from them are meant by the fathers, their sons, and their sons' sons, is clear from the internal sense, in which evils and falsities are meant by fathers and sons. Angels - who also see a meaning in the Word when someone in the world reads it - do not understand anything other than this here by fathers and sons. For in heaven, where angels live, there is no knowledge, as there is among people on earth, of what a father is or of what a son is; for nobody there acknowledges anyone to be his father or anyone to be his son. There are no births there as there are in the world. When therefore father and son are mentioned in the Word angels think of spiritual births, which are those of goodness and truth or else of evil and falsity. Consequently they understand forms of good or else evils by fathers, and truths or else falsities by sons, since good is the father of truth and evil is the father of falsity.

[3] The reason why 'being visited' means being cast out and condemned is that this is what follows after evils reach their closing stage and comes before actual condemnation, meant in the Word by the last judgement. For visitation is the examination of a person to discover his true character. But this takes place in the next life, in particular when the individual person goes there from the world, and in general with all at the end of the Church, as stated immediately above in 10622. Regarding visitation, see what has been stated and shown in 6588, 6895, 10509.

Note a piè di pagina:

1. Subject is used to mean something which really exists yet depends for its existence on something prior to itself.

  
/ 10837  
  

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

Dalle opere di Swedenborg

 

Arcana Coelestia #6895

Studia questo passo

  
/ 10837  
  

6895. 'Saying, I have certainly visited you' means His coming to those who belong to the spiritual Church. This is clear from the meaning of 'visiting' as the Lord's coming, which precedes the final period of the Church, the period which is spoken of in the Word as a final judgement. Regarding the meaning of 'visitation' as that judgement, see 2242, 6588; and the fact that that judgement is called the Lord's coming is evident from the following words in Matthew,

The disciples said to Jesus, Tell us, when will those things take place, and what will be the sign of your coming and of the close of the age? Matthew 24:3.

The Lord was telling the disciples then about the final period of the Church, as may be seen from the explanations given in 3353-3356, 3486, 3489, 3897-3901, 4055-4060, 4229-4231, 4422-4424. He said that when all those things happen,

The sign of the Son of Man will appear, and then all the tribes of the earth will mourn; and they will see the Son of Man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and glory. Matthew 24:30.

[2] 'The Lord's coming' is not used to mean His appearance together with angels in the clouds, but the acceptance of Him in people's hearts through love and faith, see 3353, 3900, and also His appearance from within the Word, the inmost or highest sense of which deals with the Lord alone, 4060. This coming is meant by 'the Lord's coming', which takes place at the time when an old Church is done away with and a new one is established by the Lord. And because a new phase of the Church was to be established now among the descendants of Jacob, the words 'I have certainly visited you' are used, like those spoken by Joseph when he was about to die,

Joseph said to his brothers, I am dying; and God will certainly visit you and cause you to go up out of this land to the land which He swore to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Genesis 50:24.

'Certainly visiting you' here means in the sense of the letter deliverance from slavery in Egypt and introduction into the land of Canaan. This however is not the spiritual subject matter contained in the Word but the natural. The spiritual subject matter in the Word has to do with the Lord, His kingdom and the Church, and love and faith. Consequently 'certainly visiting' is used to mean in the spiritual sense deliverance from falsities and thus introduction into things that belong to the Church and the Lord's kingdom, that is, the Lord's coming in love and faith among those who will belong to the new Church.

  
/ 10837  
  

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