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και ιρεως πεντακοσιους σικλους του αγιου και ελαιον εξ ελαιων ιν
True Christian Religion # 671
671. The following passages establish plainly that acts of washing prefigured and adumbrated what was mentioned above, that is, they represented spiritual washing, which is purification from evils and falsities.
When the Lord has washed away the filth of the daughters of Zion, and has washed away the blood in a spirit of judgment and a spirit of purging, Isaiah 4:4.
If you wash yourself with soda and use soap repeatedly on yourself, still your iniquity will retain its stains, Jeremiah 2:22; Job 9:30-31.
Wash me from my iniquity and I shall be whiter than snow, Psalms 51:2, 7.
Wash your heart free from wickedness, Jerusalem, so that you may be saved, Jeremiah 4:14.
Wash yourselves, cleanse yourselves, put away the wickedness of your deeds from before my eyes, cease to do evil, Isaiah 1:16.
[2] The washing of a person's spirit is meant by the washing of his body; and the internals of the church were represented by such external rituals as were practised by the Israelite church. This is obvious from the Lord's words in this passage:
The Pharisees and Scribes, seeing that His disciples ate bread with unwashed hands, found fault. For the Pharisees and all Jews do not eat unless they have washed their hands up to the fist; there are many other things they have accepted as a practice to be kept up, such as the washing of cups and pots, and of bronze vessels, and beds. The Lord said to them and to the crowd, Listen to me all of you and understand. There is nothing outside a person which can make him unclean if it enters into him; but it is what comes out that makes him unclean, Mark 7:1-4, 14-15; Matthew 15:2, 11, 17-20.
Also elsewhere:
Woe to you, Scribes and Pharisees, because you clean the outside of the cup and dish, but the inside is full of robbery and violence. You blind Pharisee, clean first the inside of the cup and dish, so that the outside too may be clean, Matthew 23:25-26.
It is plain from these passages that the washing called baptism stands for spiritual washing, which is being purified from evils and falsities.
1 Kings 7:23-39
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He made the molten sea of ten cubits from brim to brim, round in compass, and its height was five cubits; and a line of thirty cubits encircled it.
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Under its brim around there were buds which encircled it, for ten cubits, encircling the sea: the buds were in two rows, cast when it was cast.
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It stood on twelve oxen, three looking toward the north, and three looking toward the west, and three looking toward the south, and three looking toward the east; and the sea was set on them above, and all their hinder parts were inward.
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It was a handbreadth thick: and its brim was worked like the brim of a cup, like the flower of a lily: it held two thousand baths.
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He made the ten bases of brass; four cubits was the length of one base, and four cubits its breadth, and three cubits its height.
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The work of the bases was like this: they had panels; and there were panels between the ledges;
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and on the panels that were between the ledges were lions, oxen, and cherubim; and on the ledges there was a pedestal above; and beneath the lions and oxen were wreaths of hanging work.
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Every base had four bronze wheels, and axles of brass; and the four feet of it had supports: beneath the basin were the supports molten, with wreaths at the side of each.
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The mouth of it within the capital and above was a cubit: and its mouth was round after the work of a pedestal, a cubit and a half; and also on its mouth were engravings, and their panels were foursquare, not round.
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The four wheels were underneath the panels; and the axles of the wheels were in the base: and the height of a wheel was a cubit and half a cubit.
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The work of the wheels was like the work of a chariot wheel: their axles, and their rims, and their spokes, and their naves, were all molten.
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There were four supports at the four corners of each base: its supports were of the base itself.
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In the top of the base was there a round compass half a cubit high; and on the top of the base its stays and its panels were of the same.
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On the plates of its stays, and on its panels, he engraved cherubim, lions, and palm trees, according to the space of each, with wreaths all around.
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In this way, he made the ten bases: all of them had one casting, one measure, and one form.
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He made ten basins of brass: one basin contained forty baths; and every basin was four cubits; and on every one of the ten bases one basin.
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He set the bases, five on the right side of the house, and five on the left side of the house: and he set the sea on the right side of the house eastward, toward the south.
