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Exodus 23

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1 Thou shalt not raise a false report: put not thine hand with the wicked to be an unrighteous witness.

2 Thou shalt not follow a multitude to do evil; neither shalt thou speak in a cause to decline after many to wrest judgment:

3 Neither shalt thou countenance a poor man in his cause.

4 If thou meet thine enemy's ox or his ass going astray, thou shalt surely bring it back to him again.

5 If thou see the ass of him that hateth thee lying under his burden, and wouldest forbear to help him, thou shalt surely help with him.

6 Thou shalt not wrest the judgment of thy poor in his cause.

7 Keep thee far from a false matter; and the innocent and righteous slay thou not: for I will not justify the wicked.

8 And thou shalt take no gift: for the gift blindeth the wise, and perverteth the words of the righteous.

9 Also thou shalt not oppress a stranger: for ye know the heart of a stranger, seeing ye were strangers in the land of Egypt.

10 And six years thou shalt sow thy land, and shalt gather in the fruits thereof:

11 But the seventh year thou shalt let it rest and lie still; that the poor of thy people may eat: and what they leave the beasts of the field shall eat. In like manner thou shalt deal with thy vineyard, and with thy oliveyard.

12 Six days thou shalt do thy work, and on the seventh day thou shalt rest: that thine ox and thine ass may rest, and the son of thy handmaid, and the stranger, may be refreshed.

13 And in all things that I have said unto you be circumspect: and make no mention of the name of other gods, neither let it be heard out of thy mouth.

14 Three times thou shalt keep a feast unto me in the year.

15 Thou shalt keep the feast of unleavened bread: (thou shalt eat unleavened bread seven days, as I commanded thee, in the time appointed of the month Abib; for in it thou camest out from Egypt: and none shall appear before me empty:)

16 And the feast of harvest, the firstfruits of thy labours, which thou hast sown in the field: and the feast of ingathering, which is in the end of the year, when thou hast gathered in thy labours out of the field.

17 Three times in the year all thy males shall appear before the Lord GOD.

18 Thou shalt not offer the blood of my sacrifice with leavened bread; neither shall the fat of my sacrifice remain until the morning.

19 The first of the firstfruits of thy land thou shalt bring into the house of the LORD thy God. Thou shalt not seethe a kid in his mother's milk.

20 Behold, I send an Angel before thee, to keep thee in the way, and to bring thee into the place which I have prepared.

21 Beware of him, and obey his voice, provoke him not; for he will not pardon your transgressions: for my name is in him.

22 But if thou shalt indeed obey his voice, and do all that I speak; then I will be an enemy unto thine enemies, and an adversary unto thine adversaries.

23 For mine Angel shall go before thee, and bring thee in unto the Amorites, and the Hittites, and the Perizzites, and the Canaanites, and the Hivites, and the Jebusites: and I will cut them off.

24 Thou shalt not bow down to their gods, nor serve them, nor do after their works: but thou shalt utterly overthrow them, and quite break down their images.

25 And ye shall serve the LORD your God, and he shall bless thy bread, and thy water; and I will take sickness away from the midst of thee.

26 There shall nothing cast their young, nor be barren, in thy land: the number of thy days I will fulfil.

27 I will send my fear before thee, and will destroy all the people to whom thou shalt come, and I will make all thine enemies turn their backs unto thee.

28 And I will send hornets before thee, which shall drive out the Hivite, the Canaanite, and the Hittite, from before thee.

29 I will not drive them out from before thee in one year; lest the land become desolate, and the beast of the field multiply against thee.

30 By little and little I will drive them out from before thee, until thou be increased, and inherit the land.

31 And I will set thy bounds from the Red sea even unto the sea of the Philistines, and from the desert unto the river: for I will deliver the inhabitants of the land into your hand; and thou shalt drive them out before thee.

32 Thou shalt make no covenant with them, nor with their gods.

33 They shall not dwell in thy land, lest they make thee sin against me: for if thou serve their gods, it will surely be a snare unto thee.

   

From Swedenborg's Works

 

Apocalypse Revealed #444

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444. "Release the four angels who are bound at the great river Euphrates. This symbolically means, to remove from them external bonds, to enable the interiors of their minds to appear.

It is impossible for anyone to know that this is the symbolic meaning of these words, and scarcely possible for anyone to suspect it, if he does not know what is meant by the great river Euphrates, and by the four angels bound there.

In the Word, the Euphrates symbolizes the inner constituents of the human mind, called rational, which in people governed by truths springing from goodness are full of wisdom, but which in people caught up in falsities springing from evil are full of irrationality.

This is the symbolic meaning of the river Euphrates in the Word. The reason is that this river formed the boundary between the land of Canaan and Assyria, and the land of Canaan symbolized the church, and Assyria its rational component. Therefore the river that formed the boundary between them symbolizes the inner constituents of the mind called rational, and this in both senses. For there are three components that form the person of the church: the spiritual component; the rational or intellectual component; and the natural component, which is one of knowledge. The spiritual component of the church is symbolized by the land of Canaan and its rivers; the rational or intellectual component of the church by Asshur or Assyria and its river, the Euphrates; and the natural component of the church, which is one of knowledge, by Egypt and its river, the Nile. But for more on this subject, see no. 503 below.

The four angels bound at the river Euphrates symbolize these interior constituents in people of the church, and they are said to be bound because they are kept hidden from public view. For it is hellish spirits that are meant by these four angels, inasmuch as we are told that they were prepared to kill a third of mankind, as we will presently see in no. 446; and people's inner constituents are affiliated with spirits, either hellish ones or heavenly ones, since they dwell together. To release them means, symbolically, to remove external bonds, to enable the interiors of their minds to appear.

This is the symbolic meaning of these words.

[2] That the Euphrates symbolizes the interiors of a person's mind coextensive with the spiritual tenets of his church can be seen from passages in the Word where Asshur or Assyria are mentioned. In the following passages, however, the Euphrates occurs in an opposite sense, in which it symbolizes interiors full of falsities and thus insanities:

...behold, (God) is causing to rise up upon them the waters of the River (Euphrates), strong and mighty - the king of Asshur... It will pass through Judah, flood it and pass over it... (Isaiah 8:7-8)

...why take the road to Egypt, to drink the waters of Sihor? Or why take the road to Assyria, to drink the waters of the River? (Jeremiah 2:18)

Jehovah will devote to destruction the tongue of the Sea of Egypt; ...He will shake His hand over the River (Euphrates).... (Isaiah 11:15-16)

The sixth angel poured out his bowl on the... river Euphrates, and its water was dried up... (Revelation 16:12)

The prophet Jeremiah was commanded to put a sash around his loins, and afterward to hide it in a hole in a rock by the Euphrates; and when, after a short time, he recovered it, behold, it was ruined and profitable for nothing (Jeremiah 13:1-7, 11).

The same prophet was also commanded, after he had finished reading a book, to throw it into the middle of the Euphrates and say, "Thus shall Babylon sink and not rise" (Jeremiah 51:63-64).

These events represented the interior qualities of the state of the church among the children of Israel.

That the river Nile in Egypt and the river Euphrates in Assyria were boundaries of the land of Canaan is apparent from the following verse:

...Jehovah made a covenant with Abram, saying, "To your offspring I will give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river... Euphrates." (Genesis 15:18)

To be shown that the Euphrates was one boundary, see Exodus 23:31, Deuteronomy 1:7-8; 11:24, Joshua 1:4, Micah 7:12.

  
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Many thanks to the General Church of the New Jerusalem, and to Rev. N.B. Rogers, translator, for the permission to use this translation.

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