921. The symbolism of Noah built an altar to Jehovah as the practice of representing the Lord can be seen from the things just now said.
All the ritual of the ancient church represented the Lord, as did the ritual of the Jewish religion. But the chief item representing him came to be the altar, along with the burnt offering. Because it was clean animals and birds that were offered, the representation matched the symbolism involved, clean animals meaning the good effects of charity, and clean birds, the true ideas of faith. When the people of the ancient church offered up such creatures, it meant symbolically that the gifts they offered the Lord consisted of these attributes. Nothing else can be offered to the Lord that is pleasing to him.
Their descendants, however, like the surrounding nations and the Jews too, corrupted the practice, not realizing that it had any symbolic meaning and viewing all worship as an external affair.
[2] The fact that the altar was the main object to represent the Lord can also be seen from this: Before the establishment of any other kind of ritual, before construction of the ark, before the building of the Temple, there were altars, even among non-Jewish nations.
We see that when Abram came to the mountain on the east of Bethel, he constructed an altar and called on Jehovah's name (Genesis 12:8). He was ordered to offer Isaac up as a burnt offering on an altar (Genesis 22:2, 9). Jacob built an altar at Luz, which is Bethel (Genesis 35:6-7). And Moses built an altar at the foot of Mount Sinai and offered a sacrifice (Exodus 24:4-5, 6). This was before the establishment of the sacrifices and before the construction of the ark, around which they later conducted their worship in the wilderness.
By the same token, we know about the existence of altars among non-Jewish nations from the story of Balaam, who told Balak to build seven altars and prepare seven heads of cattle and seven rams (Numbers 23:1-7, 15-18, 29-30). And it was decreed that those nations' altars should be destroyed (for instance, Deuteronomy 7:5; Judges 2:2). So the use of altars and sacrifices in the worship of God was not an innovation on the part of the Jews.
In fact before people knew anything about slaughtering cattle and the smaller livestock on altars, they were building them as memorials.
[3] The symbolism of altars as the practice of representing the Lord, and of burnt offerings as the resulting worship of him, is clearly evident in the prophets. One example is Moses' prophecy concerning the tribe of Levi, to whom the priesthood was assigned:
They will teach your judgments to Jacob and your law to Israel. They will put incense in your nostrils and a whole [burnt offering] 1 on your altar. (Deuteronomy 33:10)
This is about the totality of worship. "They will teach your judgments to Jacob and your law to Israel" stands for inner worship. "They will put incense in your nostrils and a ‘whole [burnt offering]' on your altar" stands for outward worship that corresponds to inward worship. So the verse stands for the totality of worship. In Isaiah:
On that day, humanity will look to its maker, and its eyes will regard the Holy One of Israel; and it will not look to the altars, the work of its hands. (Isaiah 17:7-8)
Looking to altars plainly stands for representative worship in general, which was to be abolished. In the same author:
On that day there will be an altar to Jehovah in the middle of the land of Egypt and a pillar to Jehovah by its border. (Isaiah 19:19)
Here too the altar stands for external worship.
[4] In Jeremiah:
The Lord has deserted his altar, has despised his sanctuary. (Lamentations 2:7)
The altar stands for representative worship, which became idolatrous. In Hosea:
Ephraim multiplied altars for sinning; it had altars for sinning. (Hosea 8:11)
The altars stand for every act of representative worship cut off from its inner meaning and so for idolatrous practices. In the same author:
The lofty places of Aven, the sin of Israel, will be destroyed. Thorn and thistle will climb over their altars. (Hosea 10:8)
Again the altars stand for idolatrous worship. In Amos:
On the day that I exact punishment on Israel for its transgressions, I will also bring punishment on the altars of Bethel, and the horns of the altar 2 will be chopped off. (Amos 3:14)
Once more the altars stand for representative practices that became idolatrous.
[5] In David:
They will bring me to your holy mountain and to your dwelling places, and I will go in to God's altar, to God, my happiness and joy. (Psalms 43:3-4)
The altar obviously stands for the Lord. So the construction of an altar in the ancient and Jewish churches stood for the practice of representing the Lord.
Since the principal means for carrying out worship of the Lord were burnt offerings and sacrifices and these were consequently the principal symbols for representative worship, it stands to reason that the altar symbolized representative worship itself.
Footnotes:
1. This bracketed interpolation is Swedenborg's, although the same bracketed insertion a few lines later is not. [LHC]
2. The horns of the altar were projections from the four corners. Their origin is obscure, as is their sacramental function, though in 1 Kings 1:50; 2:28 fugitives seize on the horns when seeking refuge, and in ceremonies described in Exodus 29:12, Leviticus 4:30, and other passages the horns are either anointed or smeared with sacrificial blood. Perhaps originally they served as posts to secure the sacrificial victims, a use mentioned in Psalms 118:27, though biblical scholarship tends to frown on this explanation. The passage cited here (Amos 3:14) makes clear that the horns were considered an integral part of the altar that could not be removed without desecrating the whole. [SS]
