De Bijbel

 

Genesis 1:24

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24 And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so.

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Midst

  

The "midst" of something in the Bible represents the thing that is most central and most important to the spiritual state being described, the motivation that drives everything else. In general this will be something we love or feel, because at the core of things we are what we love; our loves define us.

(Referenties: Apocalypse Revealed 44, 90, 268; Arcana Coelestia 2252, 2940, 10153, 10365, 10557, 10635, 10641)

Van Swedenborgs Werken

 

Arcana Coelestia #10308

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10308. 'It shall be holy to you for Jehovah' means that it must be attached to love that is Divine. This is clear from the meaning of 'holy' as everything that emanates from the Lord, as above in 10306; and from the meaning of the incense, to which the words 'it shall be holy to you for Jehovah' refer, as worship, also dealt with above, in 10298. This meaning - that the worship must be attached to love that is Divine - follows from what has gone immediately before, where it is declared that they should not make such incense for themselves, meaning that worship consisting of the Church's holy truths should not be attached to the loves that are a person's own, 10307. By love that is Divine, love to the Lord and love towards the neighbour should be understood. The reason why this latter love as well is Divine is that it too emanates from the Lord; for no one can love the neighbour from self. Anyone who does so from self loves and confers benefits on his neighbour for selfish reasons; that is, the one he loves is himself. The whole Word, consisting of Divine Truth itself, from which all the truths that the Church possesses are derived, looks to those two loves as ends in view, see immediately above in 10307. Therefore also the worship of God must have those same loves in view, for all worship that is truly worship consists of truths, as becomes clear from what has been shown above regarding the spices of the incense, by which the kinds of truth composing worship are meant. The truths of worship first become attached to Divine Love, when the worship that the person offers begins in the Lord, as accords with what has been stated above in paragraph 10299.

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