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Genesis 16

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1 Now Sarai, Abram's wife, had given him no children; and she had a servant, a woman of Egypt whose name was Hagar.

2 And Sarai said to Abram, See, the Lord has not let me have children; go in to my servant, for I may get a family through her. And Abram did as Sarai said.

3 So after Abram had been living for ten years in the land of Canaan, Sarai took Hagar, her Egyptian servant, and gave her to Abram for his wife.

4 And he went in to Hagar and she became with child, and when she saw that she was with child, she no longer had any respect for her master's wife.

5 And Sarai said to Abram, May my wrong be on you: I gave you my servant for your wife and when she saw that she was with child, she no longer had any respect for me: may the Lord be judge between you and me.

6 And Abram said, The woman is in your power; do with her whatever seems good to you. And Sarai was cruel to her, so that she went running away from her.

7 And an angel of the Lord came to her by a fountain of water in the waste land, by the fountain on the way to Shur.

8 And he said, Hagar, Sarai's servant, where have you come from and where are you going? And she said, I am running away from Sarai, my master's wife.

9 And the angel said to her, Go back, and put yourself under her authority.

10 And the angel of the Lord said, Your seed will be greatly increased so that it may not be numbered.

11 And the angel of the Lord said, See, you are with child and will give birth to a son, to whom you will give the name Ishmael, because the ears of the Lord were open to your sorrow.

12 And he will be like a mountain ass among men; his hand will be against every man and every man's hand against him, and he will keep his place against all his brothers.

13 And to the Lord who was talking with her she gave this name, You are a God who is seen; for she said, Have I not even here in the waste land had a vision of God and am still living?

14 So that fountain was named, fountain of Life and Vision: it is between Kadesh and Bered.

15 And Hagar gave birth to a child, the son of Abram, to whom Abram gave the name of Ishmael.

16 Abram was eighty-six years old when Hagar gave birth to Ishmael.

   

From Swedenborg's Works

 

Arcana Coelestia #1900

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1900. 'Go in now to my servant-girl' means a joining to the more exterior man. This too is clear from what has been stated already - that the rational part of man's mind is conceived and begotten from the internal man as its father and from the exterior as its mother. Man's very life springs from the internal man, which cannot have any communication with the external, other than a very obscure communication, until the formation of recipient vessels belonging to the memory has been effected by means of cognitions and knowledge.

[2] The influx of the internal man occurs as an influx into the cognitions and factual knowledge that are present in the exterior man - affection being the means. Meanwhile, before they are present, a communication does indeed exist, but solely through those affections that control the external man; so that not more than very general stirrings and certain appetites occur there, and also certain blind inclinations such as reveal themselves in small children. But this life grows by degrees more definite as vessels are formed in the memory by means of cognitions and in the inner memory by rational concepts. As these vessels are formed and arranged into a sequence - into such a sequence in fact that they stand mutually related to one another like blood relatives and relatives by marriage, or like communities and families - so the correspondence is perfected of the external man with the internal man, and even better so through rational concepts, which are intermediate.

[3] But if the cognitions by means of which those vessels are formed are not truths, a lack of congruity still exists, for the celestial and spiritual things belonging to the internal man do not discover any correspondence for themselves except within truths. Such truths constituting the organic forms of the two memories 1 are the genuine vessels into which the celestial things of love and the spiritual things of faith may be introduced fittingly; for when they are so introduced they are arranged by the Lord according to the pattern and image of the communities of heaven, that is, of the Lord's kingdom - insomuch that the person becomes, in miniature, heaven or the Lord's kingdom, as also in the Word the minds of those people are called in whom the celestial things of love and the spiritual things of faith are present. But these matters have been stated for the benefit of those minds that like to go more deeply.

Footnotes:

1. i.e. the interior memory and the exterior memory, see 2469ff.

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