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Exodus第30章:2

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2 πήχεος τὸ μῆκος καὶ πήχεος τὸ εὖρος τετράγωνον ἔσται καὶ δύο πήχεων τὸ ὕψος ἐξ αὐτοῦ ἔσται τὰ κέρατα αὐτοῦ

来自斯威登堡的著作

 

Arcana Coelestia#9229

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9229. 'And men of holiness shall you be to Me' means a state of life then composed of good. This is clear from the meaning of 'men of holiness' as those who are led by the Lord, for the Divine which emanates from the Lord is holiness itself, 6788, 7499, 8127 (end), 8302, 8806. Consequently those who receive that emanation in faith and also in love are called holy ones. Anyone who imagines that a person is holy from any other source, or that anything present with a person is holy apart from that which comes and is received from the Lord is very much mistaken; for that which is the person's own, and is called his proprium, is evil.

The human proprium is nothing but evil, see 210, 215, 694, 874-876, 987, 1047, 4328, 5660, 5786, 8480, 8944.

To the extent that a person can be withheld from his proprium, the Lord can be present with him, and therefore to the same extent holiness resides with him, 1023, 1044, 1581, 2256, 2388, 2406, 2411, 8206, 8393, 8988 (end), 9014.

[2] The truth that the Lord is the Only Holy One, and that nothing is holy except that which emanates from the Lord, and so that which a person receives from the Lord, is evident from everywhere in the Word, as in John,

I make Myself holy, that they also may be made holy in the truth. John 17:19.

'Making Himself holy' means making Himself Divine by His own power. Consequently those who receive Divine Truth emanating from the Lord in faith and life are said to be 'made holy in the truth'.

[3] This also explains why after the Resurrection, when the Lord spoke to the disciples, He breathed on them and said to them, Receive the Holy Spirit, John 20:22. 'Breathing on (or into)' was a sign that represented the imparting of life through faith and love, as also in Genesis,

Jehovah breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man (homo) became a living soul. Genesis 2:7.

Other examples like this may be seen elsewhere, such as Psalms 33:6; 104:29-30; Job 32:8; 33:4; John 3:8. Therefore also the Word is said to be inspired because it comes from the Lord, and those who wrote the Word have been called 'inspired'. Breathing, and so breathing on or inspiring, corresponds to the life of faith, see 97, 1119, 1120, 3883-3896. This explains why the term spirit in the Word is derived from the word for wind, and holiness from the Lord is called Jehovah's wind, 8286, and why the Holy Spirit is the holiness emanating from the Lord, 3704, 4673 (end), 5307, 6788, 6982, 6993, 8127 (end), 8302, 9199.

[4] So also it says in John 1:33 that the Lord baptizes with the Holy Spirit, and in Luke 3:16 that He baptizes with the Holy Spirit and with fire. 'Baptizing' in the internal sense means regenerating, 4255, 5120 (end), 9088; 'baptizing with the Holy Spirit' means regenerating by means of the good of faith; and 'baptizing with fire' means regenerating by means of the good of love, 'fire' being the good of love, see 934, 4906, 5215, 6314, 6832, 6834, 6849, 7324. In John,

Who is not going to fear You, O Lord, and glorify Your name? For You alone are holy. Revelation 15:4.

In Luke the angel telling Mary about the Lord said,

That which is holy will be born from you. Luke 1:35.

And in Daniel,

I saw in the visions of my head while on my bed, and behold, a vigilant and holy one came down from heaven. Daniel 4:13.

In these places 'that which is holy' and 'a holy one' stand for the Lord.

[5] Because the Lord alone is holy He is called in the Old Testament the Holy One of Israel, the Redeemer, the Saviour, and the Regenerator, as in Isaiah 1:4; 5:19, 24; 10:20; 12:6; 17:7; 29:19; 30:11-12, 15; 31:1; 37:23; 41:14, 16, 20; 43:3, 14; 45:11; 47:4; 48:17; 49:7; 54:5; 55:5; 60:9, 14; Jeremiah 50:29; 51:5; Ezekiel 39:7; Psalms 71:22; 78:41; 89:18. This is why the Lord in heaven, and consequently heaven itself, is called the dwelling-place of holiness, Jeremiah 25:30; 31:23; 1 Isaiah 63:15; the sanctuary, 2 Ezekiel 11:16; 24:21; and also the mountain of holiness, Psalms 3:4. It is also why the middle of the tent [of meeting], where the ark containing the law was, was called The Holy of Holies, Exodus 26:33-34; for the law in the ark in the middle of the tent [of meeting], represented the Lord in respect of the Word. For the law is the Word, 6752, 7463.

[6] All this shows why it is that the angels are called holy in Matthew 25:31; Mark 8:38; Luke 9:26; Psalms 149:1; Daniel 8:13; also the prophets, Luke 1:70; and the apostles too, Revelation 18:20. Not that they are holy by their own virtue but that the Lord, who alone is holy and the only source of holiness, makes them so. For truths are meant by 'the angels', because they are those who receive truth from the Lord, 1925, 4085, 4295, 4402, 7268, 7873, 8192, 8301; teachings which present the truth that comes through the Word from the Lord are meant by 'the prophets', 2534, 7269; and all the truths and forms of the good of faith in their entirety which come from the Lord are meant by 'the apostles', 3488, 3858 (end), 6397.

[7] Consecrations 3 among the Israelite and Jewish people took place in order that the Lord who alone was holy might be represented, and in order that holiness, which He alone is the source of, might be represented. This is the reason for the consecration of Aaron and his sons, Exodus 29:1ff; Leviticus 8:10-11, 13, 30; the consecration of their garments, Exodus 29:21ff; the consecration of the altar in order that it might be most holy, 4 Exodus 29:37ff; the consecration of the tent of meeting, the ark of the Testimony, the table, all the vessels, the altar of incense, the altar of burnt offering and its vessels, and the laver and its base, Exodus 30:26ff.

[8] The truth that the Lord is the real Holiness that was represented is evident also from the Lord's words in Matthew when they are seen in the internal sense,

Fools and blind! Which of the two is greater, the gold or the temple that makes the gold holy? And which of the two is greater, the gift or the altar that makes the gift holy? Matthew 23:17-19.

'The temple' represented the Lord Himself, and so did 'the altar', while 'the gold' was a sign of the good that comes from the Lord, and 'the gift' or a sacrifice was a sign of things constituting faith and charity that come from the Lord.

The Lord was represented by 'the temple', see 2777, 3720, and by 'the altar', 2777, 2811, 4489, 8935, 8940. 'Gold' was a sign of good that comes from the Lord, 1551, 1552, 5658, and 'a sacrifice' a sign of worship springing from faith and charity that come from the Lord, 922, 923, 2805, 2807, 2830, 6905, 8680, 8682, 8936.

[9] From all this it is now evident why it is that the children of Israel were called a holy people in Deuteronomy 26:19 and elsewhere, or as in the present verse men of holiness. That is to say, they were so called because every single aspect of their worship represented Divine realities that are the Lord's, and celestial and spiritual things of His kingdom and Church. On this account they were called holy in a representative sense; they themselves were not holy on that account, because representatives had regard to the holy things that were represented, not to the person who represented them, see 665, 1097 (end), 1361, 3147, 3881 (end), 4208, 4281, 4288, 4293, 4307, 4444, 4500, 6304, 7048, 7439, 8588, 8788, 8806.

[10] On that account also was Jerusalem called holy, and Zion the mountain of holiness in Zechariah 8:3 and elsewhere, as well as in Matthew,

And the tombs were opened, and many bodies of dead holy ones were raised; and coming out of their tombs after the Lord's resurrection, they went into the holy city and appeared to many. Matthew 27:52-53.

Here Jerusalem is called 'the holy city', when in fact, quite to the contrary, it was unholy because the Lord was crucified there at that time, for which reason it is called 'Sodom and Egypt' in John,

Their bodies will lie in the street of the great city which spiritually is called Sodom and Egypt, where also our Lord was crucified. Revelation 11:8.

Yet it is called holy, because it means the Lord's kingdom and the Church, 402, 2117, 3654. The appearance of 'dead holy ones' there, an event witnessed by some in vision, was a sign of the salvation of people who belonged to the spiritual Church, and of the raising of those people to the Holy Jerusalem, which is heaven - the people who had been kept up to that time on the lower earth, spoken of in 6854, 6914, 7091, 7828, 7932, 8049, 8054, 8159, 8321.

脚注:

1Jeremiah 31:23 refers to a dwelling-place of righteousness [and] mountain of holiness, to be exact

2. i.e. an especially holy place

3. i.e. dedicating persons or things to holy functions or purposes

4. literally, the holiness of holinesses

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

来自斯威登堡的著作

 

Arcana Coelestia#1820

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1820. 'By what shall I know that I shall inherit it?' means temptation directed against the Lord's love which wished to be made quite certain of the outcome. This becomes clear from the feeling of doubt which the words express. Anyone who is undergoing temptation experiences doubt as regards the end in view. That end is the love against which evil spirits and evil genii fight and in so doing place the end in doubt. And the greater his love is, the more they place it in doubt. Unless the end in view which a person loves is placed in doubt, and even in despair, there would be no temptation. A feeling of certainty about the outcome precedes, and is part of, victory.

[2] Since few people know what temptations really are, let a brief explanation of them be given here. Evil spirits never contend against any other things than those which a person loves, and the more intensely he loves them the more fiercely do those spirits contend. Evil genii are the ones that contend against the things of affection for what is good, and evil spirits are the ones that do so against the affection for what is true. As soon as they detect even the smallest thing that a person loves or get a scent, so to speak, of what is delightful and precious to him, they attack it instantly and try to destroy it, and so the whole person, since his life consists in his loves. Nothing ever gives them greater delight than to destroy a person; nor would they leave off but would continue even for ever, if the Lord did not drive them away. Those who are ill-disposed and deceitful worm their way into those very loves by flattering them, and in this way they bring a person in among themselves. And once they have so brought him in, they very soon try to destroy his loves and so to slay that person, which they do in a thousand unimaginable ways.

[3] Nor are the attacks which they make solely those in which they reason against goods and truths - the making of such attacks being nothing to them, for if they were defeated a thousand times over they would carry on with them because their supply of reasonings against goods and truths can never be exhausted. Rather, in their attacks, they pervert goods and truths, setting these ablaze with a certain kind of evil desire and of persuasion, so that the person himself does not know any other than that similar desire and persuasion reign within him. At the same time they infuse those goods and truths with delight which they seize from the delight which that person has in some other thing. In these ways they infect and infest him most deceitfully, doing it all so skillfully by leading him from the one thing to another that if the Lord did not come to his aid, that person would never know other than that it was indeed so.

[4] They act in similar ways against the affections for truth that constitute conscience. As soon as they become aware of anything, whatever the nature of it, that is a constituent part of that conscience, they mould an affection out of the falsities and weaknesses that exist with that person, and by means of that affection they dim the light of truth and so pervert it, or else they cause him anxiety and torment. In addition to this they keep his thought firmly fixed on one single thing; and they fill that thought with delusions, at the same time secretly incorporating evil desires within those delusions. Besides this they use countless other devices which cannot possibly be described so as to be understood. These are a few of the ways - and only very general ones - by which they are able to get at a person's conscience, which above all else they take the greatest delight in destroying.

[5] These few, indeed very few, observations show the nature of temptations - in general that the nature of a person's temptations is as the nature of his loves. They also show the nature of the Lord's temptations, that these were the most dreadful of all, for as is the intensity of the love so is the dreadfulness of the temptations. The Lord's love - a most ardent love - was the salvation of the whole human race; it was therefore a total affection for good and affection for truth in the highest degree. Against these all the hells contended, employing the most malicious forms of guile and venom, but the Lord nevertheless conquered them all by His own power. Victories have this effect, that after they have been won, wicked genii and spirits do not dare to attempt anything; for their life consists in their being able to destroy, but when they perceive that a person is able to withstand them, they flee even when they are making their first assault, as they usually do when they draw near to merely the threshold of heaven. They are straightaway gripped with horror and dread and hurl themselves back in retreat.

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