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Daniel 9

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1 In the first year of Darius, the son of Ahasuerus, of the seed of the Medes, who was made king over the kingdom of the Chaldaeans;

2 In the first year of his rule, I, Daniel, saw clearly from the books the number of years given by the word of the Lord to the prophet Jeremiah, in which the making waste of Jerusalem was to be complete, that is, seventy years.

3 And turning my face to the Lord God, I gave myself up to prayer, requesting his grace, going without food, in haircloth and dust.

4 And I made prayer to the Lord my God, putting our sins before him, and said, O Lord, the great God, greatly to be feared. keeping your agreement and mercy with those who have love for you and do your orders;

5 We are sinners, acting wrongly and doing evil; we have gone against you, turning away from your orders and from your laws:

6 We have not given ear to your servants the prophets, who said words in your name to our kings and our rulers and our fathers and all the people of the land.

7 O Lord, righteousness is yours, but shame is on us, even to this day; and on the men of Judah and the people of Jerusalem, and on all Israel, those who are near and those who are far off, in all the countries where you have sent them because of the sin which they have done against you.

8 O Lord, shame is on us, on our kings and our rulers and our fathers, because of our sin against you.

9 With the Lord our God are mercies and forgiveness, for we have gone against him;

10 And have not given ear to the voice of the Lord our God to go in the way of his laws which he put before us by the mouth of his servants the prophets.

11 And all Israel have been sinners against your law, turning away so as not to give ear to your voice: and the curse has been let loose on us, and the oath recorded in the law of Moses, the servant of God, for we have done evil against him.

12 And he has given effect to his words which he said against us and against those who were our judges, by sending a great evil on us: for under all heaven there has not been done what has been done to Jerusalem.

13 As it was recorded in the law of Moses, all this evil has come on us: but we have made no prayer for grace from the Lord our God that we might be turned from our evil doings and come to true wisdom.

14 So the Lord has been watching over this evil and has made it come on us: for the Lord our God is upright in all his acts which he has done, and we have not given ear to his voice.

15 And now, O Lord our God, who took your people out of the land of Egypt with a strong hand and made a great name for yourself even to this day; we are sinners, we have done evil.

16 O Lord, because of your righteousness, let your wrath and your passion be turned away from your town Jerusalem, your holy mountain: because, through our sins and the evil-doing of our fathers, Jerusalem and your people have become a cause of shame to all who are round about us.

17 And now, give ear, O our God, to the prayer of your servant and to his request for grace, and let your face be shining on your holy place which is made waste, because of your servants, O Lord.

18 O my God, let your ear be turned and give hearing; let your eyes be open and see how we have been made waste and the town which is named by your name: for we are not offering our prayers before you because of our righteousness, but because of your great mercies.

19 O Lord, give ear; O Lord, have forgiveness; O Lord, take note and do; let there be no more waiting; for the honour of your name, O my God, because your town and your people are named by your name.

20 And while I was still saying these words in prayer, and putting my sins and the sins of my people Israel before the Lord, and requesting grace from the Lord my God for the holy mountain of my God;

21 Even while I was still in prayer, the man Gabriel, whom I had seen in the vision at first when my weariness was great, put his hand on me about the time of the evening offering.

22 And teaching me and talking to me he said, O Daniel, I have come now to give you wisdom.

23 At the first word of your prayer a word went out, and I have come to give you knowledge; for you are a man dearly loved: so give thought to the word and let the vision be clear to you.

24 Seventy weeks have been fixed for your people and your holy town, to let wrongdoing be complete and sin come to its full limit, and for the clearing away of evil-doing and the coming in of eternal righteousness: so that the vision and the word of the prophet may be stamped as true, and to put the holy oil on a most holy place.

25 Have then the certain knowledge that from the going out of the word for the building again of Jerusalem till the coming of a prince, on whom the holy oil has been put, will be seven weeks: in sixty-two weeks its building will be complete, with square and earthwork.

26 And at the end of the times, even after the sixty-two weeks, one on whom the holy oil has been put will be cut off and have no ...; and the town and the holy place will be made waste together with a prince; and the end will come with an overflowing of waters, and even to the end there will be war; the making waste which has been fixed.

27 And a strong order will be sent out against the great number for one week; and so for half of the week the offering and the meal offering will come to an end; and in its place will be an unclean thing causing fear; till the destruction which has been fixed is let loose on him who has made waste.

   

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Apocalypse Explained # 397

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397. Until their fellow-servants as well as their brethren, who were to be killed, as they also were, should be fulfilled, signifies until evils were consummated. This is evident from the signification of "until they should be fulfilled," as being until they were consummated; also from the signification of "their fellow-servants as well as their brethren, who were to be killed, as they also were," as being evils, for to kill these denotes evil, "fellow-servants" meaning those who are in truths, and "brethren" those who are in goods, and "fellow-servants" and "brethren" together those who are in truths from good; for in the internal sense the two are conjoined into one.

"Consummation" is mentioned in some passages in the Word, likewise "when evils are consummated," but scarcely anyone at this day knows what this signifies. In three articles above (n. 391, 392, 394) it is said that the former heaven consisted of such as had led a moral life in externals, and yet were internally evil, and that these dwelt in high places in the spiritual world, and therefore thought themselves to be in heaven.

These, because they were interiorly evil, would not tolerate among them those that were interiorly good, and this because their affections and thoughts were discordant, for all consociations in the spiritual world are effected according to agreement of affections and thence of thoughts; for angels and spirits are nothing but affections and thoughts therefrom in a human form; and as those who then were in the high places could not endure the presence of those who were interiorly good, they cast them out from among them, and wherever they saw them, treated them wrongfully and shamefully, consequently the good were delivered by the Lord from this violence and concealed under heaven and preserved; and this was taking place from the time when the Lord was in the world even until this time when the judgment was accomplished; then those who were on high places were cast down, and those who were under heaven were elevated. The evil were tolerated so long on the high places, and the good were detained so long under heaven, in order that both "might be fulfilled," which means that there might be a sufficient number of the good to form a new heaven, and also that the evil might sink down of themselves into hell; for the Lord casts no one down into hell, but the evil itself which is with evil spirits casts them down (as may be seen in the work on Heaven and Hell 545-550). This takes place when evils are consummated, that is, fulfilled.

[2] This also is what is meant by the Lord's words in Matthew:

The servants of the householder coming, said, Didst not thou sow good seed in thy field? whence then are the tares? And they said, Wilt thou therefore that we go and gather them up? But he said, Nay, lest in gathering the tares ye root up at the same time the wheat with them. Let both grow together until the harvest; and in the time of harvest I will say to the reapers, Gather ye together first the tares, and bind them into bundles to burn them; but gather the wheat into the barn. So shall it be in the consummation of the age (Matthew 13:27-30, 37-42).

"The consummation of the age" is the last time when judgment takes place; "the time of harvest" is when all things are consummated, that is, are fulfilled; "the tares" mean evils or those in whom evils are, and "the wheat" means goods or those in whom goods are. (But of these see further in the small work on The Last Judgment 65-72.) From all this it can in some measure be known why it was said to them "that they should rest yet a little time, until their fellow-servants, as well as their brethren, who were to be killed, as they also were, should be fulfilled;" "to be killed" has here the like signification as "to be slain" above n. 392, namely, to be rejected by the evil because of Divine truth, and because of their confession of the Lord.

[3] When this is known it can be known what is signified by "consummation" and by "iniquity consummated" in the following passages. In Moses:

Jehovah said, I will go down and see whether they have made a consummation, according to the cry that is come unto Me (Genesis 18:20-21).

This is said of Sodom. In the same:

For the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet consummated [fulfilled] (Genesis 15:16).

In Isaiah:

A consummation and decision I have heard from the Lord Jehovih of Hosts upon the whole earth (Isaiah 28:22).

In the same:

A consummation is determined, righteousness has overflowed. For the Lord Jehovih of Hosts is making a consummation and a decision in the whole earth (Isaiah 10:22-23).

In Zephaniah:

In the fire of the zeal of Jehovah of Hosts the whole land shall be devoured; for He shall make a consummation, even a speedy one, with all the inhabitants of the land (Zephaniah 1:18).

In Daniel:

At last upon the bird of abominations shall be desolation, and even to the consummation and decision it shall drop upon the devastation (Daniel 9:27);

and elsewhere. "Consummation" and "decision" in these passages signify the last state of the church, a state in which there is no longer any truth because there is no good, or in which there is no longer any faith because there is no charity; and when this is the state of the church, then comes the Last Judgment. The Last Judgment then comes, for the further reason that the human race is the basis or foundation of the angelic heaven, for the conjunction of the angelic heaven with the human race is perpetual, the one subsisting by means of the other; when therefore the basis does not correspond the angelic heaven totters; consequently there must then be a judgment upon those who are in the spiritual world, that all things in the heavens as well as in the hells, may be reduced to order. (That the human race is the basis and foundation of the angelic heaven, and that the conjunction is perpetual, see in the work on Heaven and Hell 291-310.) From this it can be known that "consummation" means the last state of the church, when there is no longer any faith because there is no charity. This state of the church is also called in the Word "vastation" and "desolation," and by the Lord "the consummation of the age" (Matthew 13:39, 40, 49; 24:3; 28:20).

  
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Thanks to the Swedenborg Foundation for their permission to use this translation.