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Genesis 15

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1 After these things the word of Jehovah came to Abram in a vision, saying, Fear not, Abram; I am thy shield, thy exceeding great reward.

2 And Abram said, Lord Jehovah, what wilt thou give me? seeing I go childless, and the steward of my house is this Eliezer of Damascus.

3 And Abram said, Lo, to me thou hast given no seed, and behold, a son of my house will be mine heir.

4 And behold, the word of Jehovah [came] to him, saying, This shall not be thine heir, but he that will come forth out of thy body shall be thine heir.

5 And he led him out, and said, Look now toward the heavens, and number the stars, if thou be able to number them. And he said to him, So shall thy seed be!

6 And he believed Jehovah; and he reckoned it to him [as] righteousness.

7 And he said to him, I am Jehovah who brought thee out of Ur of the Chaldeans, to give thee this land to possess it.

8 And he said, Lord Jehovah, how shall I know that I shall possess it?

9 And he said to him, Take me a heifer of three years old, and a she-goat of three years old, and a ram of three years old, and a turtle-dove, and a young pigeon.

10 And he took all these, and divided them in the midst, and laid the half of each opposite its fellow; but the birds he did not divide.

11 And the birds of prey came down on the carcases; and Abram scared them away.

12 And as the sun was just going down, a deep sleep fell upon Abram; and behold, a horror, a great darkness, fell upon him.

13 And he said to Abram, Know assuredly that thy seed will be a sojourner in a land [that is] not theirs, and they shall serve them; and they shall afflict them four hundred years.

14 But also that nation which they shall serve I will judge; and afterwards they shall come out with great property.

15 And thou shalt go to thy fathers in peace; thou shalt be buried in a good old age.

16 And [in the] fourth generation they shall come hither again; for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet full.

17 And it came to pass when the sun had gone down, and it was dark, that behold, there was a smoking furnace, and a flame of fire which passed between those pieces.

18 On the same day Jehovah made a covenant with Abram, saying, Unto thy seed I give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates;

19 the Kenites, and the Kenizzites, and the Kadmonites,

20 and the Hittites, and the Perizzites, and the Rephaim,

21 and the Amorites, and the Canaanites, and the Girgashites, and the Jebusites.

   

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Arcana Coelestia #1864

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1864. In that day Jehovah made a covenant with Abram. That this signifies the conjunction of the Lord’s interior man with His Internal, is evident from the signification of a “covenant,” as being conjunction (explained before, n. 665, 666, 1023, 1038). And as the Lord is here treated of in the internal sense, it signifies interior conjunction. For the Lord advanced more and more to conjunction and union with Jehovah His Father, until He became One, that is, the Human Essence itself also became Jehovah, who was the Lord’s Internal itself. These things were represented by the covenant which Jehovah made with Abram. Everyone can see that Jehovah never makes a covenant with a man, for this would be contrary to the Divine. What is a man but something vile and filthy, which of itself thinks and does nothing but evil? All the good that he does is from Jehovah; from which it may be seen that this covenant, like other covenants with Abram’s posterity, was nothing but a representative of the Divine, and of the celestial things of the kingdom of God; in the present case that the covenant was representative of the conjunction of the Lord’s Human Essence with His Divine Essence, that is, with Jehovah. That it was representative of the conjunction of the Lord’s interior man with His Internal, that is, Jehovah, is evident from what has been said before, namely, that by the combats and victories of temptations the Lord conjoined and united Himself more and more. What His interior man was, has been told before, namely, that it was intermediate between the internal man and the external.

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