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Genesis第50章

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1 And Joseph put his head down on his father's face, weeping and kissing him.

2 And Joseph gave orders to his servants who had the necessary knowledge, to make his father's body ready, folding it in linen with spices, and they did so.

3 And the forty days needed for making the body ready went by: and there was weeping for him among the Egyptians for seventy days.

4 And when the days of weeping for him were past, Joseph said to the servants of Pharaoh, If now you have love for me, say these words to Pharaoh:

5 My father made me take an oath, saying, When I am dead, put me to rest in the place I have made ready for myself in the land of Canaan. So now let me go and put my father in his last resting-place, and I will come back again.

6 And Pharaoh said, Go up and put your father to rest, as you gave your oath to him.

7 So Joseph went up to put his father in his last resting-place; and with him went all the servants of Pharaoh, and the chief men of his house and all the chiefs of the land of Egypt,

8 And all the family of Joseph, and his brothers and his father's people: only their little ones and their flocks and herds they did not take with them from the land of Goshen.

9 And carriages went up with him and horsemen, a great army.

10 And they came to the grain-floor of Atad on the other side of Jordan, and there they gave the last honours to Jacob, with great and bitter sorrow, weeping for their father for seven days.

11 And when the people of the land, the people of Canaan, at the grain-floor of Atad, saw their grief, they said, Great is the grief of the Egyptians: so the place was named Abel-mizraim, on the other side of Jordan.

12 So his sons did as he had given them orders to do:

13 For they took him into the land of Canaan and put him to rest in the hollow rock in the field of Machpelah, which Abraham got with the field, for a resting-place, from Ephron the Hittite at Mamre.

14 And when his father had been put to rest, Joseph and his brothers and all who had gone with him, went back to Egypt.

15 Now after the death of their father, Joseph's brothers said to themselves, It may be that Joseph's heart will be turned against us, and he will give us punishment for all the evil which we did to him.

16 So they sent word to Joseph, saying, Your father, before his death, gave us orders, saying,

17 You are to say to Joseph, Let the wrongdoing of your brothers be overlooked, and the evil they did to you: now, if it is your pleasure, let the sin of the servants of your father's God have forgiveness. And at these words, Joseph was overcome with weeping.

18 Then his brothers went, and falling at his feet, said, Truly, we are your servants.

19 And Joseph said, Have no fear: am I in the place of God?

20 As for you, it was in your mind to do me evil, but God has given a happy outcome, the salvation of numbers of people, as you see today.

21 So now, have no fear: for I will take care of you and your little ones. So he gave them comfort with kind words.

22 Now Joseph and all his father's family went on living in Egypt: and the years of Joseph's life were a hundred and ten.

23 And Joseph saw Ephraim's children of the third generation: and the children of Machir, the son of Manasseh, came to birth on Joseph's knees.

24 Then Joseph said to his brothers, The time of my death has come; but God will keep you in mind and take you out of this land into the land which he gave by his oath to Abraham and Isaac and Jacob.

25 Then Joseph made the children of Israel take an oath, saying, God will certainly give effect to his word, and you are to take my bones away from here.

26 So Joseph came to his death, being a hundred and ten years old: and they made his body ready, and he was put in a chest in Egypt.

   

来自斯威登堡的著作

 

Arcana Coelestia#6559

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6559. 'And will fully return to us all the evil with which we repaid him' means that a punishment as merited is therefore impending. This is clear from the meaning of 'returning the evil with which they repaid him' as a punishment as merited; for the return of evil that is done to someone is the punishment that is duly merited. What the returning of evil is, or what the nature of punishments in the spiritual world is, must be stated because it will show what the internal sense is of the words under consideration here. If in the world of spirits evil spirits do anything evil that exceeds the evil they assimilated by the life they led in the world, those who administer punishment become present in an instant and chastise those spirits in exact accord with the degree of their transgression. For the rule in the next life is that no one should become more evil than he had been in the world. Those who suffer punishment have no knowledge at all of how the ones who administer such punishment know that the evil they do exceeds what they assimilated in the world. But they are told that the nature of order in the next life is such that evil itself carries its own punishment, so that the evil that is committed is completely bound up with the evil inflicted as punishment, that is, within the evil itself lies its own punishment. It is therefore in keeping with order that those who repay with punishment should be instantly present.

[2] This is what happens when evil spirits in the world of spirits perform evil. But in their own hell one spirit chastises another in accord with the evil they assimilated by their actions in the world; for they take that evil with them into the next life. From all this it may now be seen how one is to understand the statement that a punishment as merited is therefore impending, meant by 'will fully return to us all the evil with which we repaid him'.

But as for good spirits, if by chance they utter what is evil or do what is evil, they are not punished but are pardoned and also freed from blame; for it is not their intention to utter what is evil or to do what is evil. And they know that such evil words and deeds were aroused in them by hell and for that reason were not their own fault. This fact can also be recognized from their action against that evil and subsequent grief.

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