The Bible

 

Genesis 50

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1 And Joseph fell upon his father's face, and wept upon him, and kissed him.

2 And Joseph commanded his servants the physicians to embalm his father: and the physicians embalmed Israel.

3 And forty days were fulfilled for him; for so are fulfilled the days of embalming: and the Egyptians wept for him three-score and ten days.

4 And when the days of weeping for him were past, Joseph spake unto the house of Pharaoh, saying, If now I have found favor in your eyes, speak, I pray you, in the ears of Pharaoh, saying,

5 My father made me swear, saying, Lo, I die: in my grave which I have digged for me in the land of Canaan, there shalt thou bury me. Now therefore let me go up, I pray thee, and bury my father, and I will come again.

6 And Pharaoh said, Go up, and bury thy father, according as he made thee swear.

7 And Joseph went up to bury his father; and with him went up all the servants of Pharaoh, the elders of his house, and all the elders of the land of Egypt,

8 and all the house of Joseph, and his brethren, and his father's house: only their little ones, and their flocks, and their herds, they left in the land of Goshen.

9 And there went up with him both chariots and horsemen: and it was a very great company.

10 And they came to the threshing-floor of Atad, which is beyond the Jordan, and there they lamented with a very great and sore lamentation: and he made a mourning for his father seven days.

11 And when the inhabitants of the land, the Canaanites, saw the mourning in the floor of Atad, they said, This is a grievous mourning to the Egyptians: wherefore the name of it was called Abel-mizraim, which is beyond the Jordan.

12 And his sons did unto him according as he commanded them:

13 for his sons carried him into the land of Canaan, and buried him in the cave of the field of Machpelah, which Abraham bought with the field, for a possession of a burying-place, of Ephron the Hittite, before Mamre.

14 And Joseph returned into Egypt, he, and his brethren, and all that went up with him to bury his father, after he had buried his father.

15 And when Joseph's brethren saw that their father was dead, they said, It may be that Joseph will hate us, and will fully requite us all the evil which we did unto him.

16 And they sent a message unto Joseph, saying, Thy father did command before he died, saying,

17 So shall ye say unto Joseph, Forgive, I pray thee now, the transgression of thy brethren, and their sin, for that they did unto thee evil. And now, we pray thee, Forgive the transgression of the servants of the God of thy father. And Joseph wept when they spake unto him.

18 And his brethren also went and fell down before his face; and they said, Behold, we are thy servants.

19 And Joseph said unto them, Fear not: for am I in the place of God?

20 And as for you, ye meant evil against me; but God meant it for good, to bring to pass, as it is this day, to save much people alive.

21 Now therefore fear ye not: I will nourish you, and your little ones. And he comforted them, and spake kindly unto them.

22 And Joseph dwelt in Egypt, he, and his father's house: and Joseph lived a hundred and ten years.

23 And Joseph saw Ephraim's children of the third generation: the children also of Machir the son of Manasseh were born upon Joseph's knees.

24 And Joseph said unto his brethren, I die; but God will surely visit you, and bring you up out of this land unto the land which he sware to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob.

25 And Joseph took an oath of the children of Israel, saying, God will surely visit you, and ye shall carry up my bones from hence.

26 So Joseph died, being a hundred and ten years old: and they embalmed him, and he was put in a coffin in Egypt.

   

From Swedenborg's Works

 

Arcana Coelestia #6391

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6391. 'And he will see rest that it is good' means that works of goodness done without thought of recompense are filled with happiness. This is clear from the meaning of 'rest' as the things which are of heaven, thus those who 1 have the good of charity in them, that is, who perform works of goodness without thought of recompense, dealt with below; and from the meaning of 'that it is good' as the fact that they are filled with happiness. The reason 'rest' means works of goodness done without thought of recompense is that 'rest' or peace in the highest sense means the Lord, and in the relative sense heaven and thus good which comes from the Lord, see 3780, 4681, 5662. And since the things meant by 'rest' or peace reside with none but those who have the good of charity in them and so perform works of goodness without thought of recompense, these works are meant by 'rest'; for this meaning is what follows from the train of thought in the internal sense.

[2] The fact of the matter is that people who perform good deeds with no other end in view than recompense cannot possibly know that the performance of good deeds without thought of recompense holds happiness so great that it is the happiness of heaven. The reason why they cannot know is that happiness is seen by them to reside in the delight of self-love; and insofar as a person sees delight within this love he sees no delight within heavenly love, since the two are opposites. The delight which comes out of self-love entirely destroys that which comes out of heavenly love. It destroys it so completely that there is plainly no knowledge of what heavenly delight may be; or if mention is made of what it is like, this is met with unbelief and even rejection.

[3] I have been allowed to know about this from evil spirits in the next life who, when they lived in the world, performed no good deed for others or for their country except for selfish reasons. They do not believe that any delight can exist in the performance of good deeds without recompense as the end in view; for they imagine that without recompense as the end in view all delight ceases to exist. And if they are told nevertheless that when that delight ceases to exist heavenly delight starts to do so, they are dumbfounded on hearing it. And especially when they hear that that heavenly delight flows into a person by way of his inmost being and fills him interiorly with indescribable happiness, they are all the more dumbfounded, saying they cannot take it in. Indeed they say they do not want that delight, for they think that if they lose the delight of self-love their condition is utterly wretched because all the joy of life is in that case missing; and they also call those people naive whose state is different from one of self-love. Not unlike them are those whose works are performed with a view to recompense, for they do good works for their own benefit and not that of others, that is, they regard themselves in those works, not their neighbour, nor their country, nor heaven, nor the Lord, except as those who have a duty to be of benefit to them. These are the kinds of matters that this verse dealing with Issachar describes in the internal sense.

Footnotes:

1. Reading qui (who), which Swedenborg has in his rough draft, for quae (which)

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