10449. Verses 15-20 And Moses looked back and went down from the mountain, and the two tablets of the Testimony were in his hand; the tablets were written on across them both, from the edge of one and from the edge of the other they were written on ¹ . And the tablets were the work of God, and the writing was the writing of God, engraved on the tablets. And Joshua heard the noise of the people as they shouted ² , and he said to Moses, There is the noise of war in the camp. And he said, It is not the noise of the cry in victory, and it is not the noise of the cry in defeat; the noise of a wretched cry I hear. And it happened, as he came near the camp, that he saw the calf, and the dances; and Moses grew hot with anger, and threw the tablets out of his hand and broke them beneath the mountain. And he took the calf which they had made, and burned it in the fire, and ground it up till it was powder, and sprinkled it on the face of the water, and made the children of Israel drink it.

'And Moses looked back and went down from the mountain' means the Word sent down from heaven. 'And the two tablets of the Testimony were in his hand' means the Lord's Word specifically and generally. 'The tablets were written on across them both, from the edge of one and from the edge of the other they were written on' means through which the Lord was joined to the human race, or heaven to the world. 'And the tablets were the work of God, and the writing was the writing of God, engraved on the tablets' means the outward sense of the Word and the inward - which come from the Divine - and Divine Truth. 'And Joshua heard the noise of the people as they shouted' means contemplating and discerning what the interiors of that nation were like. 'And he said to Moses, There is the noise of war in the camp' means an assault on the truth and good which are heaven and the Church's by falsities and evils which come from hell. 'And he said, It is not the noise of the cry in victory, and it is not the noise of the cry in defeat' means heaven acting from one side and hell from the other, thus falsity acting against truth, and truth against falsity. 'The noise of a wretched cry I hear' means the lamentable state of their interiors. 'And it happened, as he came near the camp' means near to hell, in which that nation was then. 'That he saw the calf, and the dances' means the hellish worship, which was in keeping with the delight belonging to that nation's external kinds of love, and the desire of their interiors to celebrate. 'And Moses grew hot with anger' means that nation's turning away from the internal side of the Word, the Church, and worship. 'And threw the tablets out of his hand and broke them beneath the mountain' means that the outward sense of the Word was altered and made different on account of that nation. 'And he took the calf which they had made' means the delight which that nation took in idolatrous worship. 'And burned it in the fire' means arising completely from self-love and love of the world, which are condemned to hell. 'And ground it up till it was powder' means the hellish falsity resulting from it. ['And sprinkled it on the face of the water' means a mixing together with truths.] 'And made the children of Israel drink it' means joined to that nation and made their own.

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