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Genesis 50

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1 And Joseph put his head down on his father's face, weeping and kissing him.

2 And Joseph gave orders to his servants who had the necessary knowledge, to make his father's body ready, folding it in linen with spices, and they did so.

3 And the forty days needed for making the body ready went by: and there was weeping for him among the Egyptians for seventy days.

4 And when the days of weeping for him were past, Joseph said to the servants of Pharaoh, If now you have love for me, say these words to Pharaoh:

5 My father made me take an oath, saying, When I am dead, put me to rest in the place I have made ready for myself in the land of Canaan. So now let me go and put my father in his last resting-place, and I will come back again.

6 And Pharaoh said, Go up and put your father to rest, as you gave your oath to him.

7 So Joseph went up to put his father in his last resting-place; and with him went all the servants of Pharaoh, and the chief men of his house and all the chiefs of the land of Egypt,

8 And all the family of Joseph, and his brothers and his father's people: only their little ones and their flocks and herds they did not take with them from the land of Goshen.

9 And carriages went up with him and horsemen, a great army.

10 And they came to the grain-floor of Atad on the other side of Jordan, and there they gave the last honours to Jacob, with great and bitter sorrow, weeping for their father for seven days.

11 And when the people of the land, the people of Canaan, at the grain-floor of Atad, saw their grief, they said, Great is the grief of the Egyptians: so the place was named Abel-mizraim, on the other side of Jordan.

12 So his sons did as he had given them orders to do:

13 For they took him into the land of Canaan and put him to rest in the hollow rock in the field of Machpelah, which Abraham got with the field, for a resting-place, from Ephron the Hittite at Mamre.

14 And when his father had been put to rest, Joseph and his brothers and all who had gone with him, went back to Egypt.

15 Now after the death of their father, Joseph's brothers said to themselves, It may be that Joseph's heart will be turned against us, and he will give us punishment for all the evil which we did to him.

16 So they sent word to Joseph, saying, Your father, before his death, gave us orders, saying,

17 You are to say to Joseph, Let the wrongdoing of your brothers be overlooked, and the evil they did to you: now, if it is your pleasure, let the sin of the servants of your father's God have forgiveness. And at these words, Joseph was overcome with weeping.

18 Then his brothers went, and falling at his feet, said, Truly, we are your servants.

19 And Joseph said, Have no fear: am I in the place of God?

20 As for you, it was in your mind to do me evil, but God has given a happy outcome, the salvation of numbers of people, as you see today.

21 So now, have no fear: for I will take care of you and your little ones. So he gave them comfort with kind words.

22 Now Joseph and all his father's family went on living in Egypt: and the years of Joseph's life were a hundred and ten.

23 And Joseph saw Ephraim's children of the third generation: and the children of Machir, the son of Manasseh, came to birth on Joseph's knees.

24 Then Joseph said to his brothers, The time of my death has come; but God will keep you in mind and take you out of this land into the land which he gave by his oath to Abraham and Isaac and Jacob.

25 Then Joseph made the children of Israel take an oath, saying, God will certainly give effect to his word, and you are to take my bones away from here.

26 So Joseph came to his death, being a hundred and ten years old: and they made his body ready, and he was put in a chest in Egypt.

   

Од делата на Сведенборг

 

Arcana Coelestia #6518

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6518. 'And I will return' means presence in the natural mind. This is clear from the meaning of 'returning' as presence, for in the internal sense 'setting out and going' means leading a life, 3335, 4882, 5493, 5605, and therefore coming back or 'returning' means the presence of this life in the place where that journey begins; for the mind is always present there. The reason why the natural mind is the location of the presence is that the land of Egypt to which he would return means the natural mind, 5276, 5278, 5280, 5288, 5701.

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

Од делата на Сведенборг

 

Arcana Coelestia #5280

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5280. 'And the abundance of corn in the land will not be known' means that no discernment at all regarding the truth present previously will exist there. This is clear from the meaning of 'being known' as being discerned; from the meaning of 'the abundance of corn' as truth that has been multiplied, dealt with above; in 5276, 5278; and from the meaning of 'the land', in this case the land of Egypt, as the natural mind, also dealt with above, in 5276, 5278, 5279. From these meanings it is evident that 'the abundance of corn in the land will not be known means that no discernment at all regarding the truth present previously will exist in the natural.

[2] This verse deals with the final state of desolation, when despair, which comes immediately before regeneration, is experienced; and this being the matter dealt with in this verse, something must be said about the nature of it. Everyone has to be reformed, and to be born anew or regenerated, so that he may enter heaven, No one, unless he is born again, can see the kingdom of God. John 3:3, 5-6.

The human being is born into sin which has increased as it has come down in a long line of descent from ancestors, grandparents, and parents; it has become hereditary and so has been handed down to offspring. At birth a person is born into so many inherited evils which have gradually increased, as described, that he is nothing but sin; therefore unless he undergoes regeneration he remains wholly immersed in sin. But to be regenerated, he must first undergo reformation, which is effected by means of the truths of faith; for he must learn from the Word, and from teaching drawn from it, what good is. Items of knowledge regarding what is good that have been acquired from the Word - that is, from teaching drawn from there - are called the truths of faith; for all truths of faith well up out of good and flow in the direction of good, good being the end they have in view.

[3] This state comes first and is called the state of reformation. Most people within the Church are introduced into it during the period from young childhood through to adolescence, though few are regenerated because most people within the Church learn the truths of faith - or religious knowledge about what is good - for the sake of reputation and position and for the sake of material gain. Since therefore the truths of faith have been introduced through his love of these things, a person cannot be born anew or be regenerated until that love has been removed. To enable such love to be removed that person is launched into a state of temptation, which takes place in the following way: His love of reputation, position, and material gain is activated by the hellish crew, for that crew's desire is to live immersed in the love of those things. But at the same time angels activate affections for what is true and good which were implanted in the state of innocence during early childhood and then stored away interiorly and preserved there for this particular purpose. As a result conflict between evil spirits and angels takes place, and this conflict taking place within a person is experienced by him as temptation. And because the action at this time involves truths and forms of good, the actual truths which were instilled initially are so to speak banished by the falsities infused by the evil spirits - so banished that they are not seen - dealt with above in 5268-5270. And as the person allows himself at this time to be regenerated, the Lord introduces through an internal route the light of truth radiated from good in the natural, in which light the truths are restored there in their proper order.

[4] This is what happens to a person who is being regenerated, but few at the present day are permitted to enter that regenerative state. So far as they allow it to happen, all people, it is true, start to be reformed through the instruction they receive in the truths and forms of good that belong to spiritual life; but as soon as they reach adolescent years they allow the world to distract them. So they turn away into those parts where hellish spirits are, who gradually alienate these people from heaven; the spirits alienate them so completely that they scarcely believe any longer in the existence of heaven. Consequently those people cannot be launched into any spiritual temptation; for if they were they would go under instantly, in which case their latter state would be worse than their former one, Matthew 12:45. From all this one may see the nature of what the internal sense contains here, namely the state of reformation and the state of regeneration. This particular verse however describes the final state in temptation, which is a state of despair - this state being dealt with immediately above in 5279.

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