576. The following places establish the fact that ten, like a tenth, symbolizes a remnant. In Isaiah:
Many houses will become desolate — large, beautiful ones — without any inhabitant, since ten acres of vineyard will yield a single bath, and the sowing of a homer will yield an ephah. 1 (Isaiah 5:9-10)
This concerns the devastation of spiritual and heavenly qualities. "Ten acres of vineyard will yield a bath" stands for the fact that so few traces of any spiritual quality remain. "The sowing of a homer will yield an ephah" stands for the fact that so few traces of any heavenly quality remain. In the same author:
And a great [portion] will be abandoned in the middle of the land, but a tenth will remain there and be converted; yet they are destined for eradication. (Isaiah 6:12-13)
The middle of the land stands for the inner self, and the tenth part, for so small a remnant. In Ezekiel:
You shall have honest scales and an honest ephah and an honest bath. The measure of an ephah and of a bath will be the same, so that a bath may hold a tenth of a homer, and an ephah a tenth of a homer. Their measure will be according to the homer. And the statute for the oil — the bath for oil — is a tenth of a bath out of a kor, 2 ten baths being a homer; for ten baths are a homer. (Ezekiel 45:10-11, 14)
This discusses holy attributes of Jehovah in terms of measures, which symbolize different categories of sacred qualities. Ten here symbolizes a remnant of heavenly traits and of the spiritual traits that grow out of them. What would be the point of all these measures and the numbers that specify them if they did not contain some hidden, sacred significance? This applies to chapter 45 of Ezekiel and earlier chapters dealing with the heavenly Jerusalem and the new temple, to other prophets as well, and to various rituals in the Jewish religion.
[2] In Amos:
The virgin of Israel has fallen; she will not rise again. This is what the Lord Jehovih has said: "The city going out as a thousand will leave a remnant of one hundred, and the one going out as a hundred will leave a remnant of ten for the house of Israel." (Amos 5:2-3)
Here a remnant is mentioned, of which the smallest part will remain, since it is only a tenth part, or in other words, a remnant of a remnant. In the same author:
Jacob's pride and his palaces I hate, and I will shut up the city and its abundance. And it will happen that if ten men have been left in one house they will die. (Amos 6:8-9)
Ten stands for the remnant, which will hardly last. In Moses:
Neither an Ammonite nor a Moabite will come into Jehovah's assembly; not even the tenth generation of them shall ever come into Jehovah's assembly. (Deuteronomy 23:3)
The Ammonite and Moabite stand for profanation of the heavenly and spiritual attributes of faith, the remnants of which were discussed earlier [§§468, 530, 560-561].
[3] The fact that tithes represent remaining traces can be seen from the discussion above. They are treated of this way in Malachi:
Bring all tithes to the treasure house to be plunder in my House, and let them test me, please, in this: if I do not open to you the floodgates of heaven and pour out on you a blessing. (Malachi 3:10)
"To be plunder in my House" stands for the remnant in our inner self. The remnant is compared to plunder because it is tucked away among all our evils and falsities, so to speak. Through the remnant come all blessings.
All feeling of charity in us, too, comes by way of the remnant in our inner self. This was represented in the religion of the Jews by their giving to the Levite, the immigrant, the orphan, and the widow after they had paid their tithes (Deuteronomy 26:12 and following verses).
[4] Since the remnant is the Lord's alone, tithes are described as "holy to Jehovah," as in Moses:
All tithes of the land — from the seed of the land, from the fruit of the tree — they will be Jehovah's, holy to Jehovah. All tithes of herd and flock, everything that passes under the [shepherd's] 3 crook — a tithe will be holy to Jehovah. (Leviticus 27:30, 32)
The Decalogue was the Ten Commandments, or the Ten Words, 4 which Jehovah wrote on tablets (Deuteronomy 10:4), and they symbolize a remnant. The fact that they were written by Jehovah's hand symbolizes that the remnant is the Lord's alone. The fact that they reside in the inner self was represented by the tablets.
Footnotes:
1. A bath (בַּת [baṯ]) is a Hebrew liquid measure equal to about twenty-four quarts or twenty-three liters. The statement "ten acres of vineyard will yield a single bath" consequently means that ten acres will produce enough grapes to make about twenty-four quarts of wine. The Latin word here translated "acre" (jugerum) and the Hebrew word for which it stands (צֶמֶד [ṣemeḏ]) mean the amount of land a yoke of oxen could plow in a day, which, according to Lewis and Short (1879; see under jugerum) is more like two-thirds of an acre. A homer (חֹמֶר [ḥōmer]) is a dry or liquid measure equal to ten ephahs or ten baths, so "the sowing of a homer will yield an ephah" means that the harvested seed will be only a tenth of the amount sown. An ephah (אֵיפָה ['êṕā]) is a dry measure equal to about twenty-one quarts or about twenty-three liters. (See Metzger and Coogan 1993, 796.) [LHC]
2. A kor (כֹּר [kōr] in Hebrew) is the same as the liquid measure called a homer (see note 1 in §576); that is, about sixty gallons or 227 liters. [LHC]
3. This bracketed interpolation is Swedenborg's. [LHC]
4. The term Decalogue comes from the Greek for "ten words;" it reflects the underlying Hebrew word דְּבָרִים (dǝḇārîm), which literally means "words." The Hebrew, however, also has the meaning "commandments," and both senses are reflected in Swedenborg's gloss here, "the Ten Commandments, or the Ten Words" (Brown, Driver, and Briggs 1996, under דָּבָר). [RS]
