Page:A Compendium of the Theological Writings of Emanuel Swedenborg.djvu/256

160 That frogs signify reasonings from mere falsities against Divine truths, may appear from the miracle of the frogs in Egypt; for by all the miracles there performed, the plagues or evils are signified with which they are afflicted after death, who by the knowledges of the natural man contend against spiritual goods and truths, and endeavour to destroy them. That by frogs are there signified reasonings of the natural man from falsities against the truths of the spiritual man, is evident from the description of that miracle in Moses: "He caused the river to bring forth frogs abundantly, and they went up and came into the house of Pharaoh, and into his bed-chamber, and upon his bed, and into the house of his servants, and of his people, and into the ovens and the kneading-troughs. . . . And after they were dead, they were gathered into heaps, and the land stank" (Exod. viii, 3, 13, 14). Likewise in David: "He turned their waters into blood, and slew their fish; He caused frogs to come forth upon their lands, into the chambers of their kings" (Psalm cv. 29, 30); referring to the plagues in Egypt. The waters turned into blood signify truths falsified; the fish that were slain signify knowledges and cognitions of the natural man, that they perished; the frogs coming forth upon the land signify the reasonings of the natural man from falsities; the chambers of the kings signify interior truths, which they perverted by such reasonings,—chambers are the interiors, and kings truths. Similar things are signified by the frogs coming up into the house of Pharaoh, into his bed-chamber, and upon his bed. From these explanations it is plain what is signified by the three unclean spirits like frogs, which came forth out of the mouth of the dragon, of the beast, and of the false prophet (Rev. xvi. 13, 14). (A. E. n. 1000.)

It is said that "The sojourning of the children of Israel, which they sojourned in Egypt, was thirty years and four hundred years;" and further, that "At the end of the thirty years and four hundred years, in this same day, all the armies of Jehovah went forth from the land of Egypt" (Exod. xii. 40-42). And yet the sojourn of the children of Israel, from the going down of Jacob into Egypt to the departure of his posterity at this time, was not more than half that time, namely, 215 years; as is very manifest from the chronology of the Sacred Scriptures. For Moses was born of Amram, Amram of Kohath, and Kohath of Levi; and Kohath, together with his father Levi went into Egypt (Gen. xlvi. 11). The period of the life of Kohath was a hundred and thirty-three