IBhayibheli

 

Exodus 23

Funda

   

1 Thou shalt not accept a false report; extend not thy hand to the wicked, to be an unrighteous witness.

2 Thou shalt not follow the multitude for evil; neither shalt thou answer in a cause, to go after the multitude to pervert [judgment].

3 Neither shalt thou favour a poor man in his cause.

4 -- If thou meet thine enemy's ox or his ass going astray, thou shalt certainly bring it back to him.

5 If thou see the ass of him that hateth thee lying under its burden, beware of leaving [it] to him: thou shalt certainly loosen [it] with him.

6 Thou shalt not pervert the judgment of thy poor in his cause.

7 Thou shalt keep far from the cause of falsehood; and the innocent and righteous slay not; for I will not justify the wicked.

8 And thou shalt take no bribe; for the bribe blindeth those whose eyes are open, and perverteth the words of the righteous.

9 And the stranger thou shalt not oppress; for ye know the spirit of the stranger, for ye have been strangers in the land of Egypt.

10 And six years thou shalt sow thy land, and gather in its produce;

11 but in the seventh thou shalt let it rest and lie [fallow], that the poor of thy people may eat [of it]; and what they leave, the beasts of the field shall eat. In like manner thou shalt deal with thy vineyard, and with thine olive-tree.

12 -- Six days thou shalt do thy work, but on the seventh day thou shalt rest; that thine ox and thine ass may rest, and the son of thy handmaid, and the stranger may be refreshed.

13 And ye shall be on your guard as to everything that I have said unto you; and shall make no mention of the name of other gods -- it shall not be heard in thy mouth.

14 Thrice in the year thou shalt celebrate a feast to me.

15 Thou shalt keep the feast of unleavened bread, (thou shalt eat unleavened bread seven days, as I have commanded thee, in the time appointed of the month Abib; for in it thou camest out from Egypt; and none shall appear in my presence empty;)

16 and the feast of harvest, the first-fruits of thy labours which thou hast sown in the field, and the feast of in-gathering, at the end of the year, when thou gatherest in thy labours out of the field.

17 Three times in the year all thy males shall appear in the presence of the Lord Jehovah.

18 Thou shalt not offer the blood of my sacrifice with leavened bread; neither shall the fat of my feast remain all night until the morning.

19 The first of the first-fruits of thy land thou shalt bring into the house of Jehovah thy God. Thou shalt not boil a kid in its mother's milk.

20 Behold, I send an Angel before thee, to keep thee in the way, and to bring thee to the place that I have prepared.

21 Be careful in his presence, and hearken unto his voice: do not provoke him, for he will not forgive your transgressions; for my name is in him.

22 But if thou shalt diligently hearken unto his voice, and do all that I shall say, then I will be an enemy to thine enemies, and an adversary to thine adversaries.

23 For mine Angel shall go before thee, and bring thee in unto the Amorites and the Hittites and the Perizzites and the Canaanites, the Hivites and the Jebusites; and I will cut them off.

24 Thou shalt not bow down to their gods, nor serve them, nor do after their deeds; but thou shalt utterly destroy them, and utterly shatter their statues.

25 And ye shall serve Jehovah your God; and he shall bless thy bread and thy water; and I will take sickness away from thy midst.

26 There shall nothing cast their young, nor be barren, in thy land; the number of thy days will I fulfil.

27 I will send my fear before thee, and confound every people to which thou comest, and will make all thine enemies turn their back to thee.

28 And I will send hornets before thee, which shall drive out the Hivite, the Canaanite, and the Hittite, from before thee.

29 I will not drive them out from before thee in one year: lest the land become desolate, and the beast of the field multiply against thee.

30 By little and little I will drive them out from before thee, until thou art fruitful, and possess the land.

31 And I will set thy bounds from the Red Sea even unto the sea of the Philistines, and from the wilderness unto the river; for I will give the inhabitants of the land into your hand, that thou mayest dispossess them from before thee.

32 Thou shalt make no covenant with them, nor with their gods.

33 They shall not dwell in thy land, lest they make thee sin against me; for if thou serve their gods, it is sure to be a snare unto thee.

   

Okususelwe Emisebenzini kaSwedenborg

 

Arcana Coelestia #9316

Funda lesi Sigaba

  
Yiya esigabeni / 10837  
  

9316. 'And brings you to the Amorite, and the Hittite, and the Perizzite, and the Canaanite, and the Hivite, and the Jebusite, and I cut them off' means when the Lord provides protection against the evils and falsities molesting the Church, and removes them. This is clear from the meaning of 'the angel', who will bring them to the nations mentioned by name, as the Lord, dealt with in 9303, 9315; from the meaning of 'the Amorite, the Hittite, the Perizzite, the Canaanite, the Hivite, and the Jebusite' as evils and falsities molesting the Church (which evils and which falsities are meant specifically by each nation, see 8054), for when the children of Israel were brought into the land of Canaan, that which served to represent the Church and heaven was established among them, and among the nations that which served to represent the evils and falsities molesting the Church (regarding this, see 3686, 4447, 6306, 6516, 8054, 8317); and from the meaning of 'cutting off' as providing protection, and so as removing. The mere protection of heaven by the Lord causes hell to be removed, that is, the mere protection of those governed by goodness and truth causes those ruled by evil and falsity to be removed, see just above in 9313.

  
Yiya esigabeni / 10837  
  

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

Okususelwe Emisebenzini kaSwedenborg

 

Arcana Coelestia #3686

Funda lesi Sigaba

  
Yiya esigabeni / 10837  
  

3686. 'And Esau saw that the daughters of Canaan were evil in the eyes of Isaac his father' means the Lord's foresight and provision that the affections for that truth - the affections to which natural good had been joined until then - would not be suitable for such conjunction. This is clear from the meaning of 'seeing' here as foresight and provision, dealt with in 2837, 2839; from the representation of 'Esau' as the Lord as regards the Divine Good of the Natural, dealt with already; from the meaning of 'the daughters of Canaan', in this case the daughters of Heth, as affections for truth from a non-genuine source, dealt with in 3470, 3620-3622; and from the meaning of '[evil] in the eyes of Isaac his father' as not being suitable for such conjunction, that is to say, through the good of the natural, represented by 'Esau', with the good of the rational, represented by 'Isaac'. From this it is evident that all these words mean the Lord's foresight and provision that the affections for that truth, being from a non-genuine source, would not be suitable for conjunction. The truth of all this may be seen from the explanation given at 26:34-35, where the subject is the daughters of Heth whom Esau had taken as wives, and at 27:46, where the subject is the plea to Jacob not to marry one of the daughters of Canaan. The reason why 'the daughters of Canaan' here means affections for truth from a non-genuine source, whereas above 'the daughters of Canaan' meant affections for falsity and evil, 3662, 3683, is that the Hittites in the land of Canaan belonged to the Church as it existed among gentiles. They were not so much under the influence of falsity and evil as other nations there, such as the Canaanites, Amorites, and Perizzites. This also was why the Hittites represented the Lord's spiritual Church among the gentiles, 2913, 2986.

[2] The Most Ancient Church which was celestial and existed before the Flood was situated in the land of Canaan, see 567. The Ancient Church which existed after the Flood was also situated there, as well as in many other countries, 1238, 2385. This was how it came about that all the gentile nations there, and also all the territories there, and all the rivers there, served as representatives. For the most ancient people, who were celestial, perceived through all the objects they beheld the kind of things that belong to the Lord's kingdom, 920, 1409, 2896, 2897, 2995, and so beheld the same through the territories and the rivers there.

[3] After their times those representatives survived in the Ancient Church, including the representatives related to the places there. Furthermore the Word that existed in the Ancient Church, dealt with in 2897-2899, contained place-names which were for the same reason representative; and the Word existing after their times, which is called Moses and the Prophets, also contains them. This was why Abraham was commanded to go there, and the promise was made to him that his descendants would possess that land. That promise was not made because they were any better than all the other nations, for they were the worst of them all, 1167, 3373. But it was made so that through them the representative Church might be established, in which no attention was paid to representative persons and places themselves but to the actual things which these represented, 3670, and thus also so that the names existing in the Most Ancient and the Ancient Churches might be preserved.

  
Yiya esigabeni / 10837  
  

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