The Bible

 

Genesis 17

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1 And after he began to be ninety and nine years old, the Lord appeared to him: and said unto him: I am the Almighty God: walk before me, and be perfect.

2 And I will make my covenant between me and thee: and I will multiply thee exceedingly.

3 Abram tell flat on his face.

4 And God said to him: I AM, and my covenant is with thee, and thou shalt be a father. of many nations.

5 Neither shall thy name be called any more Abram: but thou shalt be called Abraham: because I have made thee a father of many nations.

6 And I will make thee increase, exceedingly, and I will make nations of thee, and kings shall come out of thee.

7 And I will establish my covenant between me and thee, and between thy sad after thee in their generations, by a perpetual covenant: to be a God to thee, and to thy seed after thee.

8 And I will give to thee, and to thy seed, the land of thy sojournment, all the land of Chanaan for a perpetual possession, and I will be their God.

9 Again God said to Abraham: And thou therefore shalt keep my covenant, and thy seed after thee in their generations.

10 This is my covenant which you shall observe, between me and you, and thy seed after thee: All the male kind of you shall be circumcised:

11 And you shall circumcise the flesh of your foreskin, that it may be for a h sign of the covenant between me and you.

12 An infant of eight days old shall be circumcised among you, every man child in your generations: he that is born in the house, as well as the bought servant shall be circumcised, and whosoever is not of your stock:

13 And my covenant shall be in your flesh for a perpetual covenant.

14 The male, whose dash of his foreskin shall not be circumcised, that soul shall be destroyed out of his people: because he hath broken my covenant.

15 God said also to Abraham: Sarai thy wife thou shalt not call Sarai, but Sara.

16 And I will bless her, and of her I will give thee a son, whom I will bless, and he shell become nations, and kings of people shall spring from him.

17 Abraham fell upon his face, and laughed, saying in his heart: Shall a son, thinkest thou, be born to him that is a hundred years old? and shall Sara that is ninety years old bring forth?

18 And he said to God: O that Ismael may live before thee.

19 And God said to Abraham: Sara thy wife shall bear thee a son, and thou shalt call his name Isaac, and I will establish my covenant with him for a perpetual covenant, and with his seed after him.

20 And as for Ismael I have also heard thee. Behold, I will bless him, and increase, and multiply him exceedingly: he shall beget twelve chiefs, and I will make him a great nation.

21 But my covenant I will establish with Isaac, whom Sara shall bring forth to thee at this time in the next year.

22 And when he had left oil speaking with him, God went up from Abraham.

23 And Abraham took Ismael his son, and all that were born in his house: and all whom he had bought, every male among the men of his house: and he circumcised the flesh of their foreskin forthwith the very same day, as God had commanded him.

24 Abraham was ninety and nine years old, when he circumcised the flesh of his foreskin.

25 And Ismael his son was full thirteen years old at the time of his circumcision.

26 The selfsame day was Abraham circumcised and Ismael his son.

27 And all the men of his house, as well they that were born in his house, as the bought servants and strangers were circumcised with him.

   

From Swedenborg's Works

 

Arcana Coelestia #2016

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2016. To say that the Lord is the source of all good, and from this of all truth, is to express an unchanging truth. Angels see this truth with perception, so clearly that they perceive that insofar as anything is derived from the Lord it is good and true, and insofar as anything is derived from themselves it is evil and false. They also confess this truth before souls newly arrived there, and before spirits who are in doubt about it; indeed, they go so far as to declare that they are withheld by the Lord from evil and falsity which arise from their proprium and are kept by Him in good and truth. The actual withholding from their evil and falsity and the actual entrance of the Lord with good and truth is also perceptible to them; see 1614. But as to man's imagining that he does what is good from himself and thinks what is true from himself, this is an appearance due to his state being a state in which no perception is present and in which very great obscurity exists where influx is concerned. What he thinks therefore is based on that appearance, indeed on a delusion, from which he never allows himself to be removed so long as he believes nothing but the senses and reasons from these whether the thing is so. But although the appearance is such, man ought nevertheless to do what is good and to think what is true as from himself, for in no other way can he be reformed and regenerated. For the reason why, see 1937, 1947.

[2] The subject in this verse is the Lord's Human Essence that was to be united to the Divine Essence, also that all good and truth would accordingly come to man from the Divine Essence by way of His Human Essence. This is a Divine arcanum which few believe because they cannot grasp it mentally. Indeed they imagine that Divine Good can reach out to man independently of the Lord's Human united to the Divine. But the reason it cannot do so has already been shown briefly in 1676, 1990 - that through the evil desires in which he had immersed himself and through the falsities with which he had blinded himself man had moved himself so far away from the Supreme Divine that no influx of the Divine into the rational part of his mind was possible, except by way of the Human which the Lord united in Himself to the Divine. It was through His Human that communication was established, for in that way the Supreme Divine was able to come to man, as the Lord explicitly states in many places, that is to say, where He says that He is the way and that there is no other access to the Father except through Him. This then is what is being stated here - that He, that is to say, the Human united to the Divine, is the source of all good and of all truth.

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