Week 1    Day 2

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The Southern Border: Kadesh and the Wilderness of Zin

AC 1678. By “Kadesh” are signified truths, and also contentions about truths. Because the falsities, and the evils derived from them which the Lord conquered in His first combat, are here treated of, it is here said, “En-mishpat, this is Kadesh,” because there was contention about truths.

[2] That “Kadesh” signifies truths concerning which there is contention, is evident in Ezekiel, where the boundaries of the Holy Land are described:

The corner of the south, southward from Tamar as far as the waters of Meriboth (which means contentions), Kadesh, an inheritance to the great sea, and the corner of the south southward (Ezek. 47:19; 48:28).

Here “the south” denotes the light of truth; its boundary, by which is signified contention about truths, is called “Kadesh.”

[3] Kadesh also was where Moses smote the rock, out of which waters came forth. These waters were called Meribah, [named] from “contention” (Num. 20:1-2, 11, 13). By a “rock,” as is known, the Lord is signified; by “waters,” in the internal sense of the Word, are signified spiritual things, which are truths. They were called “the waters of Meribah” because there was contention about them. That they were also called “the waters of the contention of Kadesh,” is evident in Moses:

You rebelled against My mouth in the wilderness of Zin, in the contention of the assembly, to sanctify Me by the waters in their eyes. These are the waters of contention of Kadesh in the wilderness of Zin (Num. 27:14; Deut. 32:51).

So too it was to Kadesh that the spies returned from the land of Canaan, and Kadesh was the place where the Israelites murmured and contended, not being willing to enter into the land (Num. 13:26).

The Western Border: The Great Sea

AC 3693:5. “The great sea” and the “going down of the sun” is [a border], by which is represented the ultimate [or last], which is relatively obscure.

AR 238. In the spiritual world there appear atmospheres and also waters, just as in our world. The atmospheres in which the angels of the highest heaven dwell are as it were ethereal. The atmospheres in which the angels of the middle heaven dwell are as it were aerial. And the atmospheres in which the angels of the lowest heaven dwell are as it were watery, and these last appear as seas at the boundaries of heaven, where they dwell who are in general truths from the literal sense of the Word... “Waters” signify truths... Hence “the sea,” in which waters terminate and are collected, signifies the Divine truth in its boundaries....

AR 238:2. It has also been granted me to see the seas which are at the boundaries of the heavens, and to converse with those who were there, and thus to know the truth of this matter from experience. They seemed to me to be in the sea, but they said that they are not in the sea but in an atmosphere. From this it was clear to me that the sea is an appearance of the Divine proceeding from the Lord in its boundaries.

AE 518:17. “The sea of the Philistines,” where Tyre and Sidon were, signifies the knowledges of truth and good from the sense of the letter of the Word.

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