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Ezekiel 39

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1 And thou, son of man, prophesy against Gog, and say, Thus saith the Lord Jehovah: Behold, I am against thee, O Gog, prince of Rosh, Meshech, and Tubal;

2 and I will turn thee back, and lead thee, and will cause thee to come up from the uttermost north, and will bring thee upon the mountains of Israel.

3 And I will smite thy bow out of thy left hand, and will cause thine arrows to fall out of thy right hand.

4 Thou shalt fall upon the mountains of Israel, thou, and all thy bands, and the peoples that are with thee: I have given thee to be meat for the birds of prey of every wing, and to the beasts of the field.

5 Thou shalt fall on the open field; for I have spoken [it], saith the Lord Jehovah.

6 And I will send a fire on Magog, and among them that dwell at ease in the isles: and they shall know that I [am] Jehovah.

7 And my holy name will I make known in the midst of my people Israel; and I will not suffer my holy name to be profaned any more: and the nations shall know that I [am] Jehovah, the holy One in Israel.

8 Behold, it cometh, and shall be done, saith the Lord Jehovah. This is the day whereof I have spoken.

9 And they that dwell in the cities of Israel shall go forth, and shall kindle fire, and burn weapons, and shields, and targets, bows, and arrows, and hand-staves, and spears: and they shall make fires with them seven years.

10 And no wood shall be taken out of the field, neither cut down out of the forests; for they shall make fire with the weapons; and they shall spoil those that spoiled them, and plunder those that plundered them, saith the Lord Jehovah.

11 And it shall come to pass in that day, [that] I will give unto Gog a place there for burial in Israel, the valley of the passers-by to the east of the sea; and it shall stop [the way] of the passers-by; and there shall they bury Gog and all the multitude; and they shall call it, Valley of Hamon-Gog.

12 And seven months shall the house of Israel be burying them, that they may cleanse the land;

13 and all the people of the land shall bury [them]; and it shall be to them for renown in the day that I shall be glorified, saith the Lord Jehovah.

14 And they shall sever out men of continual employment to go through the land, who, with the passers-by, shall bury those that remain upon the face of the land, to cleanse it: at the end of seven months shall they make a search.

15 And the passers-by shall pass through the land, and when [any] seeth a man's bone, he shall set up a sign by it, till the buriers have buried it in the Valley of Hamon-Gog.

16 And also the name of the city shall be Hamonah. Thus shall they cleanse the land.

17 And thou, son of man, thus saith the Lord Jehovah: Speak unto the birds of every wing, and to every beast of the field, Gather yourselves together and come, assemble yourselves on every side to my sacrifice which I sacrifice for you, a great sacrifice upon the mountains of Israel, that ye may eat flesh, and drink blood.

18 Ye shall eat the flesh of the mighty, and drink the blood of the princes of the earth, of rams, of lambs, and of goats, [and] of bullocks, all of them fatted beasts of Bashan.

19 And ye shall eat fat till ye are full, and drink blood till ye are drunken, of my sacrifice which I sacrifice for you.

20 And ye shall be filled at my table with horses and charioteers, with mighty men, and with all men of war, saith the Lord Jehovah.

21 And I will set my glory among the nations, and all the nations shall see my judgment which I have executed, and my hand which I have laid upon them.

22 And the house of Israel shall know that I [am] Jehovah their God from that day and forward.

23 And the nations shall know that the house of Israel went into captivity for their iniquity, because they were unfaithful against me; and I hid my face from them, and gave them into the hand of their enemies, so that they fell all of them by the sword.

24 According to their uncleanness and according to their transgressions I did unto them, and I hid my face from them.

25 Therefore, thus saith the Lord Jehovah: Now will I bring again the captivity of Jacob, and have mercy upon the whole house of Israel, and will be jealous for my holy name:

26 and they shall bear their confusion, and all their unfaithfulness in which they have acted unfaithfully against me, when they shall dwell safely in their land, and none shall make them afraid;

27 when I have brought them again from the peoples, and gathered them out of their enemies' lands, and am hallowed in them in the sight of many nations.

28 And they shall know that I [am] Jehovah their God, in that I caused them to be led into captivity among the nations, and have gathered them unto their own land, and have left none of them any more there.

29 And I will not hide my face any more from them, for I shall have poured out my Spirit upon the house of Israel, saith the Lord Jehovah.

   

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Apocalypse Revealed # 436

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436. And they had breastplates like breastplates of iron. (9:9) This symbolically means that their arguments based on fallacies, with which they battled and prevailed, appeared to them too strong to be refuted.

Breastplates symbolize protections, because they protect the breast. Here they symbolize protections of falsities, which are concocted by arguments based on fallacies, which people use to defend a false proposition. For from a false proposition nothing but falsities can flow. If truths are advanced, they are regarded only externally or superficially, thus also sensually, and so are falsified, becoming then fallacies in the people who entertain them.

Breastplates have this symbolism because battles in the Word symbolize spiritual battles, and weapons of war therefore symbolize various defenses connected with such a battle - as in Jeremiah,

Harness the horses, and mount up, you horsemen! And station yourselves in your helmets, polish the spears, put on the cuirass. (Jeremiah 46:4)

In Isaiah,

He put on righteousness as a breastplate, and a helmet of salvation on His head. (Isaiah 59:17)

In the book of Psalms,

...under His wings you shall be confident; His truth shall be your shield and buckler. (Psalms 91:4)

And so also elsewhere, as Ezekiel 23:24; 38:4; 39:9, Nahum 2:3, Psalm. 5:12; 35:2-3.

Their breastplates being breastplates of iron means, symbolically, that their arguments seemed to them too strong to be refuted; for owing to its hardness iron symbolizes strength.

  
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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.