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Zechariah 12

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1 The word of the Lord about Israel. the Lord by whom the heavens are stretched out and the bases of the earth put in place, and the spirit of man formed inside him, has said:

2 See, I will make Jerusalem a cup of shaking fear to all the peoples round about, when Jerusalem is shut in.

3 And it will come about in that day that I will make Jerusalem a stone of great weight for all the peoples; all those who take it up will be badly wounded; and all the nations of the earth will come together against it.

4 In that day, says the Lord, I will put fear into every horse and make every horseman go off his head: and my eyes will be open on the people of Judah, and I will make every horse of the peoples blind.

5 And the families of Judah will say in their hearts, The people of Jerusalem have their strength in the Lord of armies, their God.

6 In that day I will make the families of Judah like a pot with fire in it among trees, and like a flaming stick among cut grain; they will send destruction on all the peoples round about, on the right hand and on the left: and Jerusalem will be living again in the place which is hers, that is, in Jerusalem.

7 And the Lord will give salvation to the tents of Judah first, so that the glory of the family of David and the glory of the people of Jerusalem may not be greater than that of Judah.

8 In that day the Lord will be a cover over the people of Jerusalem; and he who is feeble among them in that day will be as strong as David, and the family of David will be as God, as the angel of the Lord before them.

9 And it will come about on that day that I will take in hand the destruction of all the nations who come against Jerusalem.

10 And I will send down on the family of David and on the people of Jerusalem the spirit of grace and of prayer; and their eyes will be turned to the one who was wounded by their hands: and they will be weeping for him as for an only son, and their grief for him will be bitter, like the grief of one sorrowing for his oldest son.

11 In that day there will be a great weeping in Jerusalem, like the weeping of Hadad-rimmon in the valley of Megiddon.

12 And the land will give itself to weeping, every family separately; the family of David by themselves, and their wives by themselves; the family of Nathan by themselves, and their wives by themselves;

13 The family of Levi by themselves, and their wives by themselves; the family of Shimei by themselves, and their wives by themselves;

14 And all the other families by themselves, and their wives by themselves.

   

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Apocalypse Revealed # 434

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434. They had hair like women's hair. (9:8) This symbolically means that they seemed to themselves to have an affection for truth.

In the Word a man symbolizes an understanding of truth, and a woman an affection for truth, because a man is by birth a form of the intellect, and a woman a form of affection, as we say in Angelic Wisdom Regarding Marriage. 1 Hair in the Word symbolizes the lowest level of a person's life, which is the sensual level, as said in no. 424. It is on this level that it seems to these people that they have an affection for truth, when in fact they have an affection for falsity, since they believe it to be true.

That a woman symbolizes an affection for truth can be seen from many passages in the Word. So it is that the church is called a wife, woman, daughter, and virgin. The church, moreover, is a church by virtue of its love or affection for truth, for this is what gives rise to an understanding of truth.

[2] The church is called a woman in the following places:

...there were two women, the daughters of one mother, (who) committed harlotry in Egypt..., Oholah (being) Samaria, and Oholibah (being) Jerusalem. (Ezekiel 23:2-4)

...Jehovah has called you like a woman forsaken and afflicted in spirit, and a youthful woman... (Isaiah 54:6-7)

...Jehovah has created a new thing in the earth - a woman shall encompass a man. (Jeremiah 31:21-22)

The woman clothed with the sun, whom the dragon pursued (Revelation 12), symbolizes the New Church, which is the New Jerusalem.

Women symbolize affections for truth, by virtue of which the church is a church, in many other places, as in the following:

The women of My people you cast out from its delightful house. (Micah 2:9)

(The families of the houses shall mourn by themselves,) and... women by themselves... (Zechariah 12:11-13)

Rise up, you women at ease, hear... my speech. (Isaiah 32:9)

Why do you do... evil..., to cut off from you man and woman...? (Jeremiah 44:7)

...I will scatter man and woman... (Jeremiah 51:22)

A man and woman, here and elsewhere, mean, symbolically in the spiritual sense, an understanding of truth and an affection for truth.

Poznámky pod čarou:

1. A reference to a work by that title never published by the writer. Extant in manuscript are a brief outline, a relatively short preliminary draft, and two indices for a longer draft on the subject of marriage that has not been found. The content of the existing material makes clear that these manuscripts, including the missing longer draft, were written in preparation for Delights of Wisdom Relating to Married Love (or Conjugial Love), Followed By Pleasures of Insanity Relating to Licentious Love, which the writer published in 1768, two years after publishing the present work on the Apocalypse.

  
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Many thanks to the General Church of the New Jerusalem, and to Rev. N.B. Rogers, translator, for the permission to use this translation.