1615. Genesis 13:18. And Abram pitched his tent, and he came and lived in the oak groves of Mamre, which is in Hebron; and there he built an altar to Jehovah.
Abram pitched his tent, and he came and lived in the oak groves of Mamre, which is in Hebron, means that the Lord arrived at a still deeper perceptive ability; this is his sixth phase. 1 And there he built an altar to Jehovah symbolizes worship in that phase.
Footnotes:
1401. Genesis 12
1. And Jehovah said to Abram, "Go your way from your land and from your birth [place] and from your father's house to the land that I show you.
2. And I will make you into a great nation and bless you and make your name great, and you will be a blessing.
3. And I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse, and in you all the clans of the ground will be blessed."
4. And Abram went, as Jehovah had spoken to him, and with him went Lot. And Abram was a son of seventy-five years when he left Haran.
5. And Abram took Sarai his wife, and Lot his brother's son, and all their gain that they had gained, and [every] soul that they had made 1 in Haran, and they left to go into the land of Canaan. And they came into the land of Canaan.
6. And Abram passed through the land, all the way to the place of Shechem, all the way to the oak grove 2 of Moreh. (And the Canaanite was then in the land.)
7. And Jehovah was seen by Abram and said, "To your seed I will give this land." And there he built an altar to Jehovah, who had been seen by him.
8. And he moved from there onto a mountain to the east of Bethel and spread his tent; Bethel was toward the sea 3 and Ai toward the east. And there he built an altar to Jehovah and called on Jehovah's name.
9. And Abram traveled, going and traveling toward the south.
10. And there was famine in the land; and Abram went down into Egypt to reside as an immigrant there, because the famine was heavy in the land.
11. And it happened when he came near entering Egypt that he said to Sarai his wife, "Consider, please; I know that you are a woman beautiful to see.
12. And it will happen when the Egyptians see you that they will say, ‘This is his wife,' and kill me and keep you alive.
13. Please say you are my sister, in order that it may go well for me on account of you and that my soul may live because of you."
14. And it happened when Abram came into Egypt that the Egyptians saw the woman, that she was very beautiful.
15. And Pharaoh's officers saw her and praised her to Pharaoh; and the woman was taken to Pharaoh's house.
16. And he was good to Abram on her account, and Abram had flock and herd, and male donkeys and male servants, and female servants and female donkeys, and camels.
17. And Jehovah struck Pharaoh — and his household — with great plagues because of this word 4 of Sarai, Abram's wife.
18. And Pharaoh called Abram and said, "What is this you have done to me? Why didn't you point out to me that she was your wife?
19. Why did you say, ‘She is my sister'? And I would have taken her for my woman. And now look: your wife; take her and go."
20. And Pharaoh gave orders concerning Abram to his men, and they sent him away, and his wife, and all that he had.
1401. Summary
TRUE history begins here. All the elements are representative, and the individual words are symbolic. 5
Everything said about Abram in this chapter represents the Lord's state from childhood to adolescence. 6
The Lord was born the same as any other human, so he also advanced from a murky state to one of greater clarity. Haran is the first phase, which is dark; Shechem is the second; the oak grove of Moreh is the third; the mountain from which Bethel was toward the sea and Ai was toward the east is the fourth; going from there southward into Egypt is the fifth. 7
Footnotes:
1. (in the text of Genesis 12:5). " [Every] soul that they had made" is usually taken to mean every slave they had acquired as property, although below, at §1436, Swedenborg makes it clear that he sees the term as including animals. Brown, Driver, and Briggs 1996 compare this use of the verb "make" (עָשָׂה [‘āśā]) with the English idiom "make money" (page 795 left column, Strong's 6213, Qal definition II.7). [LHC]
2. (in the text of Genesis 12:6). The Latin word quercetum, "oak grove," represents the Hebrew אֵלוֹן ('ēlôn), which is usually rendered by English translators of the Bible simply as "oak (tree)" or as "terebinth (tree)." Some of the verses in which it appears are 2 Samuel 18:9-10; Isaiah 1:30. [LHC]
3. (in the text of Genesis 12:8). The Hebrew word for the sea is the same as that for the west (יָם [yām]) because the major sea of the area, the Mediterranean, was to the west. Swedenborg here translates it with a Latin term for the sea (mare) rather than for the west, but the meaning is that Bethel was west of Abram's encampment. [LHC]
4. (in the text of Genesis 12:17). "Word" (דָּבָר [dāḇār]) is a very broad term in Hebrew (see §1785; see also Brown, Driver, and Briggs 1996, pages 182 left column to 184 left column, Strong's 1697, especially definitions IV.1 to IV.8). The "word" of Sarai here is the matter or affair concerning her. [LHC]
5. The distinction Swedenborg makes here between historical elements as "representative" and individual words as "symbolic" occurs on one of several levels at which he differentiates these terms. Here the historical elements constitute the actual acting out of an inner meaning, while the individual words symbolize the static components of that inner meaning. Thus, as he says below in §1402, "Everything said about Abram's stay in Egypt represents and symbolizes the Lord's early education." The representation lies in the entire narrative of the stay, and the symbolism in the individual components of meaning: "Abram is the Lord; Sarai as his wife is truth;" and so on. For further discussion of Swedenborg's use of the terms symbolism and representation, see note 3 in §4. In §1409 below Swedenborg discusses the manner in which representation arose. [SS, KK]
6. Here Swedenborg abruptly changes the main subject of his exegesis. Up to this point, the text has focused on the two lower levels of meaning (aside from the literal) that Swedenborg discerns in the biblical text: the "inner narrative" meaning (which describes the spiritual development of humankind as a whole in terms of a series of "churches"), and the "spiritual" meaning (which describes how the individual person develops spiritually through a process of rebirth). Now the focus shifts to the highest, "heavenly" meaning, which addresses the process of "transformation" or "glorification" by which Jesus Christ became both human and divine (for more on these terms see note 1 in §603; for more on the levels of meaning in the Bible, see volume 1 page 25 [NCBSP: in the printed edition]). From here until the end of volume 9 (in the present edition), this will be the primary theme of Swedenborg's exegesis. This shift in focus places Swedenborg closer to the historical mainstream of Christian biblical interpretation. Medieval exegetes discerned four levels of meaning in the biblical text: the literal, the typological (which in its developed form interpreted events in the Old Testament as prefiguring "types" that were fulfilled by "antitypes" in the life of Christ), the tropological (which interpreted the moral significance of biblical stories), and the anagogical (which looked forward to an apocalyptic consummation and upward to "higher things"). When the Swedenborgian and medieval systems are compared, the strongest resemblance is between Swedenborg's "heavenly" sense and the "typological" sense of the medievals. Typological exegesis is also the oldest form of Christian allegorical reading, first appearing in the New Testament (see, for instance, Romans 5:14), and it continued to be much utilized in Christian thought. (On typology and other forms of biblical allegory, see note 1 in §606.) A key seventeenth-century practitioner of typology was the Reformed Dutch theologian Johannes Cocceius (Johann Koch; 1603-1669); he applied the typological method so extensively as to find a reference to Christ in every single passage of the Old Testament. (Cocceius is mentioned for reasons unrelated to typology in Swedenborg's Spiritual Experiences [Swedenborg 1978] §6099.) Though typology has undergone periodic minor revivals, it largely fell out of favor, along with allegorical readings in general, at the advent of the modern period. However intriguing these parallels between Swedenborg's exegetical method and typology may be, Swedenborg is quite distinctive in treating the Old Testament as a detailed account of Jesus' interior psychological development (see note 7 in §1401). [DNG]
7. The five lesser phases or subphases that Swedenborg itemizes in this section are parts of the first of the four greater phases in the process of the Lord's transformation, which are symbolized by the Genesis story cycles of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph. (On the Lord's transformation in general, see note 1 in §1603.) These greater phases can be described as follows:
1. The Abraham phase, found in Genesis 12-Genesis 15, is interpreted as an early, intuitive, heavenly or heart-centered period in the Lord's life that nevertheless involved very direct engagement with his outward, earthly self. (This phase took place in the Lord's childhood and youth. The remaining phases are not explicitly tied to specific time periods in his life.)
2. The Isaac phase is found in Genesis 16-26; it was one of conscious development of the Lord's intellectual and rational powers on the spiritual or head-centered level.
3. The Jacob phase is found in Genesis 27-36; it was one of incorporating into the deeper divine self an active, outward life that expresses the heavenly and spiritual qualities developed in the previous two phases. Thus this phase is on the earthly or action-oriented level.
4. The Joseph phase found in Genesis 37-50 completes the process of making all parts of the Lord's human nature fully divine — heavenly, spiritual, and earthly, right down to his physical body. For Swedenborg's treatment of these four phases, see §§1402, 1404, 1409:3, 1540:1, 1889, 2500-2501, 2630, 3490, 3656-3657, 3969, 4963, 5095, 5307:2, 5398, as well as the summary sections at the beginning of each chapter.
As for the subphases occurring within the Abraham cycle, five out of six of which are outlined in the current section, they can be described as follows:
(a) The first subphase, symbolized by Haran, is a spiritually dim and relatively superficial state of early childhood; on this subphase, see §§1429-1430, 1435-1436.
(b) The second subphase, symbolized by Shechem, is a state in which the heavenly qualities of love begin to appear; see §§1439-1441.
(c) The third subphase, symbolized by the oak grove of Moreh, is a state of dawning perception of factual knowledge; see §§1442-1443, 1616.
(d) The fourth subphase, symbolized by the mountain east of Bethel, is an early state in the development of knowledge of the heavenly aspects of love; see §§1449-1453, 1556-1557.
(e) The fifth subphase, symbolized by Abram's moving southward to Egypt, is a state of being instructed in knowledge from Scripture; see §§1459-1464.
(f) A sixth subphase, symbolized by his settling in Hebron after returning from Egypt, which is a state of developing a deeper capacity for religious perception, is covered in §§1615-1617.
For an overview of the glorification process as found in the heavenly meaning of Genesis 12-50, including some attempt at correlating this process with the chronological time periods in Jesus' life, see Wunsch 1929, 56-70, 132-133. [LSW]
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