Arcana Coelestia#8364
8364. 'I will not put on you any sickness that I put on the Egyptians' means that they are to be withheld from the evils present among those who uphold separated faith and lead a life of evil. This is clear from the meaning of 'sickness' as evil, dealt with below; from the representation of 'the Egyptians' as those who uphold separated faith and lead a life of evil, dealt with in 7097, 7317, 7926, 8148; and from the meaning of 'not putting on you' - when used in association with 'sickness', which means evil - as withholding from evil. For Jehovah, that is, the Lord, does not take away evil but withholds a person from it and maintains him in good, 929, 1581, 2256, 2406, 4564, 8206. So it is that 'not putting a sickness on them' means that they are to be withheld from evils.
[2] The reason why 'sickness' means evil is that in the internal sense the kinds of things that attack spiritual life are meant. The sicknesses which attack it are evils, and they are called evil desires and cravings; and the components of spiritual life are faith and charity. That life is sick when falsity exists instead of the truth of faith and evil instead of the good of charity, because they lead to the death of that life, which is called spiritual death and is damnation, just as sicknesses lead to the death of natural life. This is why in the internal sense 'sickness' means evil, and 'the sicknesses of the Egyptians' means the evils which those upholding separated faith and leading a life of evil cast themselves into, and which they used to molest the upright. Those evils have been dealt with in what has gone before, where the plagues in Egypt were the subject.
[3] Evils are again meant by 'sicknesses' elsewhere in the Word, as in Moses,
If you keep the commandments and the statutes and the judgements which I am commanding you today, Jehovah will take away all sickness from you, and will not put on you any of the evil diseases of Egypt which you have known, but will lay them on [all] who hate you. Deuteronomy 7:11, 15.
In the same author,
If you will not obey the voice of Jehovah your God, taking care to do all His commandments and His statutes, Jehovah will send on you cursing, confusion, and rebuke in all that you set your hand to do, 1 until you are destroyed, because of the wickedness of your deeds by which you have forsaken Me. Jehovah will make the pestilence cling to you, until He has consumed you from upon the land. Jehovah will strike you with consumption, and hot fever, and burning fever, and raging fever, and drought, and blight, and mildew, which will pursue you until you perish. Jehovah will strike you with the sores of Egypt, and with hemorrhoids, and the scab, and the itch, so that you cannot be healed. Jehovah will strike you with madness, and blindness, and stupefaction. 2 You will be made mad by what your eyes will see 3 . Jehovah will strike you with evil sores on the knees and on the thighs, from which you cannot be healed, from the sole of your foot to the top of your head. He will throw back onto you every disease of Egypt, also every sickness and every plague that is not written in the book of this Law. Jehovah will give you a trembling heart, failing 4 of eyes, and distress of soul. Deuteronomy 28:15, 20-22, 27-28, 34-35, 60-61, 65.
All the sicknesses mentioned here mean spiritual sicknesses, which are evils destructive of the life of a will desiring what is good and falsities destructive of the life of an understanding seeing what is true, in short things destructive of spiritual life composed of faith and charity. Natural sicknesses also correspond to such things, for every sickness present among the human race has its origin in spiritual ones, because each exists as a result of sin, 5712, 5726. Each sickness furthermore corresponds to its own evil. The explanation for this is that everything composing a person's life originates in the spiritual world. If therefore his spiritual life is sick, evil spreads from it into his natural life and becomes a sickness there. See what has been stated from experience in 5711-5727 about the correspondence of sicknesses with evils.
[4] The same things are meant by 'sicknesses' elsewhere, as in Moses,
You shall worship Jehovah your God, in order that He may bless your bread and your water; and I will take sickness out of your midst. Exodus 23:25.
In the same author,
If you despise My statutes, and if your soul abhors My judgements, so that you do not do all My commandments, while you make void My covenant, I will appoint terror over you, along with consumption, and burning fever, which will consume the eyes and torment the soul. Leviticus 26:15-16.
'Consumption' stands for the decrease of truth and the increase of falsity, 'burning fever' for the desire for evil. Further still, in Isaiah,
Why will you also defect? 5 The whole head [departs] into sickness, and the whole heart is diseased. From the sole of the foot even to the head there is no soundness in it, but wounds, and scars, and recent blows. They are not pressed out, nor bound up, nor softened with oil. Isaiah 1:5-6.
Here nobody can fail to see that 'sickness', 'wounds', 'scars', and 'blows' are used to mean sins. Similarly in Ezekiel,
Woe to the shepherds of Israel! The weak sheep you have not strengthened, the sick you have not healed, and the broken you have not bound up. Ezekiel 34:2, 4.
In David,
My iniquities have gone over my head. My wounds have become putrid, they have rotted away because of my foolishness. For my intestines are full of burning, and there is no soundness in my flesh. Psalms 38:4-7.
[5] Since the disorders and evils of spiritual life are meant by 'sicknesses', the various kinds of disorders and evils of that life are meant by the various kinds of sicknesses. 'Pestilence' means the vastation or laying waste of goodness and truth, see 7102, 7505; and 'leprosy' means the profanation of truth, 6963. In general 'sicknesses' means sins, as may also be seen in Isaiah,
... a man of sorrows, and acquainted with sickness, on account of which as it were men hid their faces from Him. He was despised, so that we did not esteem Him. Nevertheless He has borne our sicknesses and carried our sorrows, and through His wounds healing has been given to us. Isaiah 53:3-5.
This refers to the Lord.
[6] Since sicknesses represented the unrighteous ways and the evils of spiritual life the sicknesses which the Lord healed have as their meaning deliverance from the different kinds of evil and falsity that were molesting the Church and human race and that would have brought spiritual death. Divine miracles are distinguishable from other miracles by the fact that they involve and have regard to states of the Church and the heavenly kingdom; and this is why the Lord's miracles were primarily healing of sicknesses. These miracles are meant by the Lord's words addressed to the disciples sent by John,
Tell John the things which you hear and see: the blind see and the lame walk; lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear; the dead rise again and the poor hear the gospel. Matthew 11:4-5.
This is why it says so many times that the Lord healed every sickness and every disease among the people, Matthew 4:23; 9:35; 14:14, 35-36; Luke 4:40; 5:15; 6:17; 7:21; Mark 1:32-34; 3:10.
脚注:
1. literally, in every sending of your hand which you shall do
2. literally, astonishment of heart
3. literally, by the sight of your eyes
4. literally, consumption
5. literally, Why will you add to a going back?
Deuteronomy第29章
1
These are the words of the covenant which Yahweh commanded Moses to make with the children of Israel in the land of Moab, besides the covenant which he made with them in Horeb.
2
Moses called to all Israel, and said to them, You have seen all that Yahweh did before your eyes in the land of Egypt to Pharaoh, and to all his servants, and to all his land;
3
the great trials which your eyes saw, the signs, and those great wonders:
4
but Yahweh has not given you a heart to know, and eyes to see, and ears to hear, to this day.
5
I have led you forty years in the wilderness: your clothes have not grown old on you, and your shoes have not grown old on your feet.
6
You have not eaten bread, neither have you drunk wine or strong drink; that you may know that I am Yahweh your God.
7
When you came to this place, Sihon the king of Heshbon, and Og the king of Bashan, came out against us to battle, and we struck them:
8
and we took their land, and gave it for an inheritance to the Reubenites, and to the Gadites, and to the half-tribe of the Manassites.
9
Keep therefore the words of this covenant, and do them, that you may prosper in all that you do.
10
You stand this day all of you before Yahweh your God; your heads, your tribes, your elders, and your officers, even all the men of Israel,
11
your little ones, your wives, and your foreigner who is in the midst of your camps, from the one who cuts your wood to the one who draws your water;
12
that you may enter into the covenant of Yahweh your God, and into his oath, which Yahweh your God makes with you this day;
13
that he may establish you this day to himself for a people, and that he may be to you a God, as he spoke to you, and as he swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob.
14
Neither with you only do I make this covenant and this oath,
15
but with him who stands here with us this day before Yahweh our God, and also with him who is not here with us this day
16
(for you know how we lived in the land of Egypt, and how we came through the midst of the nations through which you passed;
17
and you have seen their abominations, and their idols, wood and stone, silver and gold, which were among them);
18
lest there should be among you man, or woman, or family, or tribe, whose heart turns away this day from Yahweh our God, to go to serve the gods of those nations; lest there should be among you a root that bears gall and wormwood;
19
and it happen, when he hears the words of this curse, that he bless himself in his heart, saying, "I shall have peace, though I walk in the stubbornness of my heart, to destroy the moist with the dry."
20
Yahweh will not pardon him, but then the anger of Yahweh and his jealousy will smoke against that man, and all the curse that is written in this book shall lie on him, and Yahweh will blot out his name from under the sky.
21
Yahweh will set him apart to evil out of all the tribes of Israel, according to all the curses of the covenant that is written in this book of the law.
22
The generation to come, your children who shall rise up after you, and the foreigner who shall come from a far land, shall say, when they see the plagues of that land, and the sicknesses with which Yahweh has made it sick;
23
[and that] the whole land of it is sulfur, and salt, [and] a burning, [that] it is not sown, nor bears, nor any grass grows therein, like the overthrow of Sodom and Gomorrah, Admah and Zeboiim, which Yahweh overthrew in his anger, and in his wrath:
24
even all the nations shall say, "Why has Yahweh done thus to this land? What does the heat of this great anger mean?"
25
Then men shall say, "Because they forsook the covenant of Yahweh, the God of their fathers, which he made with them when he brought them forth out of the land of Egypt,
26
and went and served other gods, and worshiped them, gods that they didn't know, and that he had not given to them:
27
therefore the anger of Yahweh was kindled against this land, to bring on it all the curse that is written in this book;
28
and Yahweh rooted them out of their land in anger, and in wrath, and in great indignation, and cast them into another land, as at this day."
29
The secret things belong to Yahweh our God; but the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of this law.
