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Rh wandered from the belly, speaking a lie; denoting their departure from all good, signified by the womb, and from all truth, signified by the belly.

147. In the Book of Judges, we read a remarkable history respecting the Ephraimites and the Gileadites, and how the latter ''took the passages of Jordan before the former; and it was so, that when those Ephraimites which were escaped said, Let me go over, that the men of Gilead said unto him, Art thou an Ephraimite? If he said, Nay; then said they unto him, Say now Shibboleth; and he said Sibboleth, for he could not frame to pronounce it right''. (Chap. xii. 5, 6.) In the original Hebrew, the term shibboleth signifies an ear of corn, and the term sibboleth means a burden, or what is heavy. The spiritual or internal meaning of the passage, therefore, appears to be this, that the Ephraimites, who on this occasion represent the intellectual principle of the church, in its perverse state, called the ear of corn a burden; in other words, they viewed the principles of heavenly love and wisdom, which were represented by the ear of corn, as burdensome to bear, in consequence of the evils into which they had immersed themselves. It therefore follows, Then they took him, and slew him, at the passages of Jordan, (verse 6,) to denote that all spiritual life thus perished, and consequently, there was no introduction into the church, of which introduction the river Jordan was a figure.

148. That the 119th Psalm relates to the Lord, and to His fulfilment of the whole Word as to His