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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 #1955

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1955. For she said, Have I also here seen after Him who seeth me? That this signifies influx into the life of the exterior man without the rational as a medium, is evident from the signification of “seeing after Him that seeth.” “To see after Him that seeth” is to see from what is interior, or higher, for in the internal sense that which is within or above is expressed in the sense of the letter by “after,” when that which is within or above appears in that which is without or below. It is Hagar who speaks here; and by Hagar, as before shown, is signified the life of memory-knowledges, which belongs to the exterior man. As the first rational originated from this life, the Lord saw the reason for its so doing, and He saw it from His interior man in His exterior man, and did so without the rational as a medium. That the words before us involve arcana, everyone can see from the single consideration that no one can know what it is to “see after Him that seeth me,” except from an internal sense, in which also there must be such things as cannot be explained to the apprehension, except by means of ideas like those of angels, which do not fall into words, but only into the sense of the words; and this quite apart from the material ideas out of which come the ideas of the sense of the words. Concerning the things before us, which appear so obscure to man, the angels have ideas so clear and distinct, and enriched with so many representations, that were only a small part of them described, they would fill a volume.

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