1862. 'Which passed between the pieces' means that it divided off those who belonged to the Church from the Lord. This becomes clear from what has been stated above at verse 10 about the separation of the animals down the middle meaning parallelism and correspondence as regards celestial things, and about each part being laid opposite the other meaning the Church and the Lord, and about the space or interval in between meaning that which lies between the Lord and the Church, or the Lord and the member of the Church, namely a conscience in which goods and truths have been implanted by means of charity. When hatred has taken the place of charity, and evils and falsities the place of goods and truths, no conscience for what is good and true exists. Instead this space or interval in between appears as something filled up with a smoking furnace and a burning torch, that is, filled up with persuasions of falsity and with hatred, which are what separate the Lord completely from the Church. These are the things meant by 'it passed between those pieces', especially the flaming torch which is self-love, or what amounts to the same, the evil that is the product of hatred. This becomes clear also in Jeremiah where almost the same words occur,
I will make the men (vir) who transgressed My covenant and who did not keep the terms of the covenant which they made before Me like the calf which they cut in two and passed between its parts. The princes of Judah, and the princes of Jerusalem, the eunuchs and the priests, and all the people of the land who passed between the parts of the calf, and I will give them into the hand of their enemies and into the hand of those who seek their souls, and their dead bodies will be food for the birds of the aira and the beasts of the earth. Jer 34:18-20.
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