Spiritual Meaning of GENESIS 15:15
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AC 1852
. Verse 15. And thou shall go to thy fathers in peace, thou shall be buried in a good old age. " Thou shalt go to thy fathers in peace," signifies that nothing of the goods and truths shall be harmed; "thou shalt be buried in a good old age," signifies the enjoyment of all goods by those who are the Lord’s.
AC 1853
. Thou shalt go to thy fathers in peace. That this signifies that nothing of the goods and truths shall be harmed, may be seen from the signification of "fathers," also of "going to one‘s fathers," and of "peace." In the internal sense, "fathers" here signify the same as "daughters" and "sons" taken together. That "daughters" signify goods, and "sons" truths, has been shown before (n. 489-491, 533, 1147); hence "fathers" signify the things which belong to daughters and sons together. To "go to one’s fathers" is to pass from the life of the body into the life of the spirit, or from the world into the other life. "In peace," signifies that he shall lose nothing, and thus that nothing shall be harmed, for he who passes into the other life loses nothing of the things that belong to him as a man; he retains and has with him everything except the body, which had been an impediment to the interior exercise of his faculties. That no death, or passing to the fathers by death, is here meant, will be evident from what next follows.
AC 1854
. Thou shalt be buried in a good old age. That this signifies the enjoyment of all goods by those who are the Lord‘s, is evident from the fact that those who die and are buried do not die, but pass from an obscure life into a clear one. For the death of the body is merely the continuation and also the perfection of the life, and they who are the Lord’s then first come into the enjoyment of all goods, which enjoyment is signified by "a good old age." The expressions that they "died," were "buried," and were "gathered to their fathers," are often met with, but in the internal sense these do not signify the same as in the sense of the letter. In the eternal sense are such things as are of the life after death and are eternal; but in the sense of the letter are such as are of the life in the world and belong to time.
[2] Consequently they who are in the internal sense (as the angels are) when such expressions are met with never abide in ideas of death and burial, but in such as relate to the continuance of life, for they regard death as nothing but the putting off of those things which are of grossest nature and of time, and as being a continuation of the real life; in fact they do not know what death is, for they think nothing about it. And the like is the case with the ages of man, so that when it is here said "in a good old age," the angels have no perception at all of old age, indeed they do not know what old age is, for they are constantly verging toward the life of early manhood and of youth. Such life, and consequently the celestial and spiritual things of it, are what are meant when "a good old age" and similar expressions occur in the Word.
GENESIS 15:15
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