De Bijbel

 

Genesis 33

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1 And Jacob lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold, Esau was coming, and with him four hundred men. And he distributed the children to Leah, and to Rachel, and to the two maidservants:

2 and he put the maidservants and their children foremost, and Leah and her children after, and Rachel and Joseph hindmost.

3 And he passed on before them, and bowed to the earth seven times, until he came near to his brother.

4 And Esau ran to meet him, and embraced him, and fell on his neck, and kissed him; and they wept.

5 And he lifted up his eyes and saw the women and the children, and said, Who are these with thee? And he said, The children that God has graciously given thy servant.

6 And the maidservants drew near, they and their children, and they bowed.

7 And Leah also, with her children, drew near, and they bowed. And lastly Joseph drew near, and Rachel, and they bowed.

8 And he said, What [meanest] thou by all the drove which I met? And he said, To find favour in the eyes of my lord.

9 And Esau said, I have enough, my brother; let what thou hast be thine.

10 And Jacob said, No, I pray thee; if now I have found favour in thine eyes, then receive my gift from my hand; for therefore have I seen thy face, as though I had seen the face of God, and thou hast received me with pleasure.

11 Take, I pray thee, my blessing which has been brought to thee; because God has been gracious to me, and because I have everything. And he urged him, and he took [it].

12 And he said, Let us take our journey, and go on, and I will go before thee.

13 And he said to him, My lord knows that the children are tender, and the suckling sheep and kine are with me; and if they should overdrive them only one day, all the flock would die.

14 Let my lord, I pray thee, pass on before his servant, and I will drive on at my ease according to the pace of the cattle that is before me, and according to the pace of the children, until I come to my lord, to Seir.

15 And Esau said, Let me now leave with thee [some] of the people that are with me. And he said, What need? Let me find favour in the eyes of my lord.

16 And Esau returned that day on his way to Seir.

17 And Jacob journeyed to Succoth, and built himself a house, and for his cattle he made booths. Therefore the name of the place was called Succoth.

18 And Jacob came safely [to the] city Shechem, which is in the land of Canaan, when he came from Padan-Aram; and he encamped before the city.

19 And he bought the portion of the field where he had spread his tent, of the hand of the sons of Hamor, Shechem's father, for a hundred kesitahs.

20 And there he set up an altar, and called it El-Elohe-Israel.

   

Van Swedenborgs Werken

 

Arcana Coelestia #4367

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4367. 'And Jacob said, No, I beg of you' means the birth of that affection. This becomes clear from what has been stated immediately above, that is to say, that the refusal to accept a gift instills affection, which is manifested here in his saying 'No, I beg of you'. From this it is evident that the birth of an affection is meant here.

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

Van Swedenborgs Werken

 

Arcana Coelestia #724

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724. Here too 'sevens of each' means that they are holy. But in this case they are holy truths, which are holy because they stem from goods. No truth is in any sense holy unless it does stem from good. A person can utter many truths from the Word, reciting them by heart, but unless they are the product of love or charity holiness is no way attributable to them. If however love and charity are there, in that case he really acknowledges and believes them, doing so from the heart. It is similar with faith, which so many people speak of as that which alone saves; unless faith stems from love or charity it is in no sense faith. It is love and charity that render faith holy. The Lord is present within love and charity, but not within faith that has been separated. Separated faith is a peculiarity of man himself, who has nothing but uncleanness within him. For when faith has been separated from love, he speaks from the intention that is in his heart, that intention being his own renown or his own profit. This anyone may recognize from personal experience, as when he tells somebody that he loves him, likes him more than anybody else, rates him the best of all, and so on, and yet in his heart he thinks something completely different. He is doing this only with his lips while denying it in his heart; and sometimes he is even making fun of that person. The same is true of faith, as I have been made fully aware through many experiences. Some during their lifetime have extolled the Lord and faith in words so fine, and at the same time with all the appearance of being devout, that their hearers have been dumbfounded. But they have not done it from the heart, and in the next life they are among those who utterly hate the Lord and persecute people who have faith.

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