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Exodus 30:23

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23 'Ja sina võta enesele parimaid palsameid: viissada seeklit sula mürri, ja pool osa sellest, kakssada viiskümmend seeklit, healõhnalist kaneeli, ja kakssada viiskümmend seeklit lõhnavat kalmust,

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Apocalypse Explained # 1151

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1151. And ointment and frankincense.- That these signify worship from spiritual love, profaned, is evident from the signification of ointment, which denotes the good of spiritual love, of which we shall speak presently; and from the signification of frankincense, which denotes the truth of spiritual good (concerning which see above, n. 491). The reason why spiritual love is signified by ointment and frankincense, is that by means of these incense offerings were made, and the incense from the fragrant fumes that ascended from the holy fire in the censers signified spiritual love. Spiritual love is love towards the neighbour, which makes one with the love of uses. There are two loves pertaining to heaven, and thence to the church, from which the Lord is worshipped, celestial love, which is love to the Lord, and spiritual love, which is love towards the neighbour; the former love is signified by cinnamon and perfumes, the latter by ointment and frankincense. All worship also is from love. That worship which is not from the one love or the other is not worship, but only an external act, in which there is interiorly nothing of the church. That the burning of incense signified worship from spiritual love may be seen above (n. 324, 491, 492, 494, 567). By ointment is meant that which was composed of aromatics, and used for incense, as is evident from these words in Moses:

"Take unto thee sweet spices, stacte, and onycha, and galbanum, sweet smelling and pure frankincense; and thou shalt make it an incense, an ointment, the work of the maker of ointment; tempered together, pure, holy; and thou shalt beat of it very small, and shalt put of it before the testimony in the tent of meeting, where I will meet with thee; it shall be the holy of holies unto you" (Exodus 30:34-37).

Here all those things together are called the ointment of the maker of ointment. These things are explained in detail in the Arcana Coelestia 10289-10308).

[2] Continuation concerning the Athanasian Creed.- There is infernal freedom, and there is heavenly freedom. Infernal freedom is that into which a man is born from his parents, and heavenly freedom is that into which he is brought by reformation by the Lord. From infernal freedom man derives the will of evil, the love of evil, and the life of evil; but from heavenly freedom he derives the will of good, the love of good, and the life of good; for as was said previously, the will, the love, and the life of man make one with his freedom. These two kinds of freedom are opposite to each other, but the opposite does not appear, except so far as man is in the one and not in the other. Nevertheless man cannot come out of infernal freedom into heavenly freedom, unless he compels himself. To compel oneself is to resist evil, and to fight against it as if from himself, but still to implore the Lord for aid to do so; it is thus that a man fights from the freedom which is from the Lord interiorly in himself, against the freedom which is from hell exteriorly in himself. It appears to him, while he is in the combat, that it is not freedom from which he fights, but a kind of compulsion, because it is against that freedom which is born with him; nevertheless, it is freedom, since otherwise he would not fight as if of himself.

[3] But the interior freedom from which he fights, though appearing like compulsion, is afterwards felt as freedom, for it becomes as if involuntary, spontaneous, and as it were innate. The case is comparatively, like that of a man who compels his hand to write, to work, to play upon a musical instrument, or to fence, the hands and arms afterwards performing these actions as if of themselves, and of their own accord; for man in such a case is in good, because removed from evil, and led by the Lord.

When a man has compelled himself against infernal freedom, he then sees and perceives that such freedom is servitude and that heavenly freedom is freedom itself, because from the Lord. The case in itself is this, that so far as a man compels himself by resisting evils, so far are the infernal societies with which he acted in unison removed from him, and he is introduced by the Lord into heavenly societies, that he may act in unison with them. On the other hand, if a man does not compel himself to resist evils, he remains in them. That this is the case, has been made known to me by much experience in the spiritual world and further, that evil does not recede in consequence of any compulsion effected by punishments, nor afterwards by any fear induced by punishments.

  
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Translation by Isaiah Tansley. Many thanks to the Swedenborg Society for the permission to use this translation.

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Arcana Coelestia # 10038

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10038. 'You shall burn with fire outside the camp' means that those things must be banished to hell and be consumed by the evils of self-love. This is clear from the meaning of 'burning with fire' as consuming by means of the evils of self-love, for 'burning' means consuming or devouring and 'fire' the evil of self-love (for these meanings of 'burning' and 'fire', see 1297, 5071, 5215, 6314, 6832, 7324, 7575, 9141, 9434); and from the meaning of 'the camp' as heaven and the Church, and in the contrary sense the place where heaven and the Church do not exist, thus where hell exists, dealt with below. The reason why 'being burned with fire' means being consumed by the evils of self-love is that that love consumes every good or truth of faith. Scarcely anyone at the present day knows that self-love does this, nor consequently that this love constitutes hell with a person and that it is what should be understood by hell-fire.

[2] There are two fires of life that exist with a person; one is self-love, the other is love to God. Those in whom self-love predominates cannot be governed by love to God, for those loves are opposites. They are opposites because self-love gives rise to all evils, which are contempt for others in comparison with self, enmity towards those who do not treat oneself favourably, and in the end to hatred, vengeance, brutality, and cruelty; and these evils act in total opposition to Divine influx, consequently annihilate truths and forms of the good of faith and charity, these being the things that flow in from the Lord. Anybody who stops to reflect may know that everyone's love is the fire of his life - for without love there is no life, and the character of the love determines that of the life - and therefore that self-love gives rise to evils of every kind, doing so in the measure that he has only himself in view, that is, self-love reigns in him. The worst kind of self-love is the love of dominion over others for selfish reasons, that is, the love of possessing dominion solely for the sake of position and gain. Those in whom that love predominates may, it is true, make profession of faith and charity, but they do so with their lips, not with their heart; indeed the worst among them look on the things that belong to faith and charity, thus the holy things of the Church, as means to their own ends. But self-love and all the different types of it, also the evils that gush out of it, and the condition of the selfish in the next life, must in the Lord's Divine mercy be stated in detail somewhere else. They have been referred to here to enable people to know what 'being burned with fire outside the camp' means.

[3] The fact that 'the camp' where the children of Israel were encamped represented heaven and the Church, and therefore that 'outside the camp' represented the place where heaven and the Church did not exist, thus where hell was, becomes clear from those places in the Word which mention the camp and the encampment of the children of Israel in the wilderness, such as the following in Moses,

The children of Israel shall camp, [every] man by his own camp, and [every] man by his own standard, according to their armies. And the Levites shall camp around the dwelling-place of the Testimony, that there may be no wrath on the congregation of the children of Israel. Numbers 1:52-53; 2:2.

In addition, Numbers 2:1-end says that the tribes of Judah, Issachar, and Zebulun encamped to the east; the tribes of Reuben, Simeon, and Gad to the south; the tribes of Ephraim, Manasseh, and Benjamin to the west; and the tribes of Dan, Asher, and Naphtali to the north. But the Levites were in the middle of their camps. The like applied when they set out on their journeys, Numbers 2:17; 10:1-end. The reason why their encampments were arranged in that kind of order was so that they might represent heaven and the Church, 9320 (end). Moreover the tribes according to which the children of Israel set up their camps represented all the forms of good and all the truths in their entirety that belonged to heaven and the Church, 3858, 3926, 3939, 4060, 6335, 6337, 6397, 6640, 7836, 7891, 7996, 7997. This explains why it says that Jehovah dwells in the middle of the camps, Numbers 5:3, and that He walks in the middle of them and they will therefore be holy, Deuteronomy 23:14, and why, in the prophecy uttered by Balaam, when he saw Israel dwelling according to their tribes, he said, How good are your tabernacles, O Jacob, and your dwelling-places, O Israel! Numbers 24:2-3, 5.

[4] Since heaven and the Church was represented by the camp it follows that 'outside the camp' meant the place where neither heaven nor the Church existed, thus where hell was. That is why everyone who was unclean and also anyone who was guilty was sent out there, as may be recognized from the following,

You shall send out of the camp everyone who is leprous, and everyone suffering a discharge, and everyone unclean on account of a soul 1 . Whether they are male or female 2 you shall send them outside the camp, so that they may not defile the camps, in the middle of which Jehovah dwells. Numbers 5:2-3; Leviticus 13:45-46.

A man who is not clean by reason of an accident in the night shall go outside the camp and not come into the middle of the camp. When he has washed himself with water and the sun has set he shall enter the camp. There shall be a space for you outside the camp where you may go out, and you shall cover your excrement by means of a spade 3 , since Jehovah walks in the middle of the camp. Therefore the camp shall be holy. Deuteronomy 23:10-14.

And the stoning of people was done outside the camp, Leviticus 24:14; Numbers 15:35-36.

From all this it is now clear that 'you shall burn with fire the flesh, skin, and dung of the young bull, outside the camp' means that evils, meant by these things, must be banished to hell.

[5] The same thing as was represented by the camp and the area outside it was also represented by the land of Canaan and the lands around it after that land had been divided up as inheritances among the children of Israel. This is why in the Word 'the land of Canaan' or simply 'the land' means heaven and the Church, and 'the children of Israel' those who are in heaven and the Church. For the meaning of 'the land' as heaven and the Church, see the places referred to in 9325; and for that of 'the children of Israel' as those who are there, 9340.

სქოლიოები:

1. i.e. unclean through contact with a dead body

2. literally, From male even to female

3. literally, peg or nail

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