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Zephaniah 1

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1 The word of Jehovah which came unto Zephaniah the son of Cushi, the son of Gedaliah, the son of Amariah, the son of Hezekiah, in the days of Josiah the son of Amon, king of Judah.

2 I will utterly consume all things from off the face of the ground, saith Jehovah.

3 I will consume man and beast; I will consume the birds of the heavens, and the fishes of the sea, and the stumblingblocks with the wicked; and I will cut off man from off the face of the ground, saith Jehovah.

4 And I will stretch out my hand upon Judah, and upon all the inhabitants of Jerusalem; and I will cut off the remnant of Baal from this place, [and] the name of the Chemarim with the priests;

5 and them that worship the host of heaven upon the housetops; and them that worship, that swear to Jehovah and swear by Malcam;

6 and them that are turned back from following Jehovah; and those that have not sought Jehovah, nor inquired after him.

7 Hold thy peace at the presence of the Lord Jehovah; for the day of Jehovah is at hand: for Jehovah hath prepared a sacrifice, he hath consecrated his guests.

8 And it shall come to pass in the day of Jehovah's sacrifice, that I will punish the princes, and the king's sons, and all such as are clothed with foreign apparel.

9 And in that day I will punish all those that leap over the threshold, that fill their master's house with violence and deceit.

10 And in that day, saith Jehovah, there shall be the noise of a cry from the fish gate, and a wailing from the second quarter, and a great crashing from the hills.

11 Wail, ye inhabitants of Maktesh; for all the people of Canaan are undone; all they that were laden with silver are cut off.

12 And it shall come to pass at that time, that I will search Jerusalem with lamps; and I will punish the men that are settled on their lees, that say in their heart, Jehovah will not do good, neither will he do evil.

13 And their wealth shall become a spoil, and their houses a desolation: yea, they shall build houses, but shall not inhabit them; and they shall plant vineyards, but shall not drink the wine thereof.

14 The great day of Jehovah is near, it is near and hasteth greatly, [even] the voice of the day of Jehovah; the mighty man crieth there bitterly.

15 That day is a day of wrath, a day of trouble and distress, a day of wasteness and desolation, a day of darkness and gloominess, a day of clouds and thick darkness,

16 a day of the trumpet and alarm, against the fortified cities, and against the high battlements.

17 And I will bring distress upon men, that they shall walk like blind men, because they have sinned against Jehovah; and their blood shall be poured out as dust, and their flesh as dung.

18 Neither their silver nor their gold shall be able to deliver them in the day of Jehovah's wrath; but the whole land shall be devoured by the fire of his jealousy: for he will make an end, yea, a terrible end, of all them that dwell in the land.

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Cut off, to be

  

In Daniel 9:26, this signifies that divine truth shall be taken from the people, but will live again in a new church. (Apocalypse Explained 315[23])

In Genesis 17:14, this signifies eternal death. (Arcana Coelestia 2058)

In Exodus 23:23, this signifies that hell is removed solely through the protection of heaven by the Lord. (Arcana Coelestia 9316) To be cut off, as in Genesis 41:36, signifies to perish.

(Odkazy: Arcana Coelestia 5302, Genesis 41)

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Arcana Coelestia # 5302

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5302. 'And the land will not be cut off in the famine' means lest the person perishes - through an absence of truth. This is clear from the meaning of 'being cut off' as perishing, and from the meaning of 'the land', in this case the land of Egypt, as the natural mind, dealt with immediately above in 5301; and because it is the natural mind, it is the person's true self, since a human being is a human being by virtue of his mind, it being the actual mind itself that constitutes a person, and the kind of mind he has that determines what kind of a person he is. By the mind is meant a person's understanding and will, consequently his essential life. People who are stupid imagine that a human being is a human being by virtue of his outward appearance, that is to say, because he possesses a human face. Others who are a little less stupid say that the human being is a human being because he has the ability to speak, while others again who are less stupid still say that the human being is a human being because he has the ability to think. But a human being is not a human being for any of these reasons but because he has the capacity to think what is true and to will what is good; and when he thinks what is true and wills what is good he has the capacity to behold what is Divine and, perceiving what it is, to accept it.

[2] This is what distinguishes a human being from animals. Not merely his human appearance, or his ability to speak, or his ability to think make him a human being; for if he thinks what is false and wills what is evil, that makes him not only like but worse than an animal. For he then uses those abilities to destroy what is human within himself and to make a wild animal of himself. This is particularly evident from people of this kind in the next life, for when they are seen in the light of heaven, and also when angels see them, they look at that moment like monsters, and some of them like wild animals. The deceitful look like snakes, and others like something different again. But when they are taken away from the light of heaven and are returned to their own inferior light which they have in hell, they look to one another like human beings. But the implications of all this - of the fact that a person will perish in times when truth is absent if he has no forms of good and truth stored away by the Lord in the interior parts of his mind, meant by 'food kept as a reserve for the land, for the seven years of famine, so that the land is not cut off in the famine' - will be stated in the sections that follow next in the present chapter.

  
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Thanks to the Swedenborg Society for the permission to use this translation.