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Genesis第35章

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1 And God said to Jacob, Arise, go up to Bethel, and dwell there, and make there an altar unto the ùGod that appeared unto thee when thou fleddest from the face of Esau thy brother.

2 And Jacob said to his household, and to all that were with him, Put away the strange gods that are among you, and cleanse yourselves, and change your garments;

3 and we will arise, and go up to Bethel; and I will make there an altar to the ùGod that answered me in the day of my distress, and was with me in the way that I went.

4 And they gave to Jacob all the strange gods that were in their hand, and the rings that were in their ears, and Jacob hid them under the terebinth that [is] by Shechem.

5 And they journeyed; and the terror of God was upon the cities that were round about them, and they did not pursue after the sons of Jacob.

6 And Jacob came to Luz, which is in the land of Canaan, that is, Bethel, he and all the people that were with him.

7 And he built there an altar, and called the place El-beth-el; because there God had appeared to him when he fled from the face of his brother.

8 And Deborah, Rebecca's nurse, died; and she was buried beneath Bethel, under the oak; and the name of it was called Allon-bachuth.

9 And God appeared to Jacob again after he had come from Padan-Aram, and blessed him.

10 And God said to him, Thy name is Jacob: thy name shall not henceforth be called Jacob, but Israel shall be thy name. And he called his name Israel.

11 And God said to him, I am the Almighty ùGod: be fruitful and multiply; a nation and a company of nations shall be of thee; and kings shall come out of thy loins.

12 And the land that I gave Abraham and Isaac, to thee will I give it, and to thy seed after thee will I give the land.

13 And God went up from him in the place where he had talked with him.

14 And Jacob set up a pillar in the place where he had talked with him, a pillar of stone, and poured on it a drink-offering, and poured oil on it.

15 And Jacob called the name of the place where God had talked with him, Beth-el.

16 And they journeyed from Bethel. And there was yet a certain distance to come to Ephrath, when Rachel travailed in childbirth; and it went hard with her in her childbearing.

17 And it came to pass when it went hard with her in her childbearing, that the midwife said to her, Fear not; for this also is a son for thee.

18 And it came to pass as her soul was departing -- for she died -- that she called his name Benoni; but his father called him Benjamin.

19 And Rachel died, and was buried on the way to Ephrath, which [is] Bethlehem.

20 And Jacob erected a pillar upon her grave: that is the pillar of Rachel's grave to [this] day.

21 And Israel journeyed, and spread his tent on the other side of Migdal-Eder.

22 And it came to pass when Israel dwelt in that land, that Reuben went and lay with Bilhah, his father's concubine; and Israel heard of it. And the sons of Jacob were twelve.

23 The sons of Leah: Reuben -- Jacob's firstborn -- and Simeon, and Levi, and Judah, and Issachar, and Zebulun.

24 The sons of Rachel: Joseph and Benjamin.

25 And the sons of Bilhah, Rachel's maidservant: Dan and Naphtali.

26 And the sons of Zilpah, Leah's maidservant: Gad and Asher. These are the sons of Jacob that were born to him in Padan-Aram.

27 And Jacob came to Isaac his father to Mamre -- to Kirjath-Arba, which is Hebron; where Abraham had sojourned, and Isaac.

28 And the days of Isaac were a hundred and eighty years.

29 And Isaac expired and died, and was gathered to his peoples, old and full of days. And his sons Esau and Jacob buried him.

   

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Arcana Coelestia#3246

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3246. 'And to the concubines' sons, whom Abraham had, Abraham gave gifts' means that places in the Lord's spiritual kingdom were allotted to spiritual people adopted by the Lord's Divine Human. This is clear from the meaning of 'the concubines' sons' as those who are spiritual, to be dealt with below; from the representation of 'Abraham' here as the Lord's Divine Human (so that the words 'whom Abraham had' mean that they - those who were spiritual - were adopted by the Lord's Divine Human); and from the meaning of 'the gifts which Abraham gave them' as allotted places in the Lord's spiritual kingdom.

[2] From what has been shown several times already about those who constitute the Lord's spiritual kingdom and who are called the spiritual, as in 3235 and elsewhere, it becomes clear that they are not sons of the marriage itself of good and truth, but of a certain covenant not so conjugial. They are indeed descended from the same father but not from the same mother, that is, from the same Divine Good but not from the same Divine Truth. Indeed with those who are celestial, since they are the product of the marriage itself of good and truth, good exists and truth rooted in that good. They never make investigations into what the truth may be but have a perception of it from good. Nor in conversation do they say more than this regarding what is true, 'Yes, that is so', in keeping with the Lord's teaching in Matthew,

Let your words be Yes, yes; No, no; anything beyond this is from evil. 1 Matthew 5:37.

But those who are spiritual, since they are the product of a covenant not so conjugial, do not have any perception from which they can know what is true. Instead they call that the truth which parents and teachers have told them to be the truth. Consequently with them there is no marriage of good and truth. Nevertheless that which they believe to be the truth for the reason just given is adopted by the Lord as truth when goodness of life exists with them; see 1832. This now explains why the spiritual are here called 'the concubines' sons', which is used to mean all the sons of Keturah mentioned already, and also those descended from Hagar, dealt with shortly below in verses 12-18.

[3] In former times - to enable both those who are celestial and those who are spiritual to be represented in marriages - a man was allowed to have a concubine in addition to a wife. That concubine was given to the husband by his wife (uxor), in which case the concubine was called his wife (mulier), or was said to have been given to him as a wife (mulier), as when Hagar the Egyptian was given to Abraham by Sarah, Genesis 16:3, when the servant-girl Bilhah was given to Jacob by Rachel, Genesis 30:4, and when the servant-girl Zilpah was given to Jacob by Leah, Genesis 30:9. In those cases they are called 'wives' (mulier), but elsewhere concubines, as is Hagar the Egyptian in the present verse, Bilhah in Genesis 35:22, and even Keturah herself in 1 Chronicles 1:32.

[4] The reason why those men of old had concubines in addition to a wife, as not only Abraham and Jacob did, but also their descendants, such as Gideon, Judges 8:31; Saul, 2 Samuel 3:7; David, 2 Samuel 5:13; 15:16; Solomon, 1 Kings 11:3, was that they were permitted to do so for the sake of the representation. That is to say, the celestial Church was represented by the wife, and the spiritual Church by the concubine. They were permitted to do so because they were the kind of men with whom conjugial love did not exist; so that to them marriage was not marriage but merely copulation for the sake of begetting off-spring. With such persons those permissions were possible without any harm being done to love or consequently to the conjugial covenant. But such permissions are never possible among people with whom good and truth are present and who are internal people, or potentially so. For as soon as good and truth, and internal things, exist with the human being, such permissions come to an end. This is why Christians are not allowed, as the Jews were, to take a concubine in addition to a wife, and why such is adultery. Regarding the adoption of those who are spiritual by the Lord's Divine Human, see what has been stated and shown already on the same subject in 2661, 2716, 2833, 2834.

脚注:

1. or from the evil one

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