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Jonah 3

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1 And the word of Jehovah came unto Jonah the second time, saying,

2 Arise, go to Nineveh, the great city, and preach unto it the preaching that I shall bid thee.

3 And Jonah arose, and went unto Nineveh, according to the word of Jehovah. Now Nineveh was an exceeding great city of three days' journey.

4 And Jonah began to enter into the city a day's journey, and he cried and said, Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!

5 And the men of Nineveh believed God, and proclaimed a fast, and put on sackcloth, from the greatest of them even to the least of them.

6 And the word reached the king of Nineveh, and he arose from his throne, and laid his robe from him, and covered himself with sackcloth, and sat in ashes.

7 And he caused it to be proclaimed and published through Nineveh by the decree of the king and his nobles, saying, Let neither man nor beast, herd nor flock, taste anything: let them not feed, nor drink water;

8 and let man and beast be covered with sackcloth, and cry mightily unto God; and let them turn every one from his evil way, and from the violence that is in their hands.

9 Who knoweth but that God will turn and repent, and will turn away from his fierce anger, that we perish not?

10 And God saw their works, that they turned from their evil way; and God repented of the evil that he had said he would do unto them, and he did [it] not.

   

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Apocalypse Revealed # 492

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492. "Clothed in sackcloth." This symbolizes the grief experienced meanwhile over the truth's not being accepted.

Being clothed in sackcloth symbolizes grief over the destruction of truth in the church, for garments symbolize truths (nos. 166, 212, 328, 378, 379). Consequently to be clothed in sackcloth, which is not a garment, symbolizes grief over the lack of truth, and where there is no truth, there is no church.

The children of Israel represented grief in various ways, which, because of their correspondence, were symbolic. For example, they would put ash on their heads, roll around in the dust, sit on the ground for a long time in silence, shave themselves, beat their breasts and wail, rend their garments, and also clothe themselves in sackcloth, and so on. Each action symbolized some evil in the church among them for which they were being punished. Then, when they were being punished, they put on a representation of repentance in these ways, and because of their representation of repentance, and at the same time then of their humbling themselves, they were heard.

[2] That putting on sackcloth represented grief over the destruction of truth in the church may be seen from the following passages:

The lion has come up from his thicket... He has gone forth from his place to make your land desolate... For this, clothe yourself with sackcloth, lament, wail. (Jeremiah 4:7-8)

O daughter of my people, gird yourself in sackcloth and roll about in ashes! ...For the destroyer will suddenly come upon us. (Jeremiah 6:26)

Woe to you, Chorazin (and) Bethsaida! For if the mighty works which were done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented... in sackcloth and ashes. (Matthew 11:21, Luke 10:13)

After the king of Nineveh heard the words of Jonah, he "laid aside his robe, covered himself with sackcloth and sat in ashes." Moreover, he proclaimed a fast and ordered that "man and beast be covered with sackcloth." (Jonah 3:5-8)

And so on elsewhere, as in Isaiah 3:24; 15:2-3; 22:12; 37:1-2; 50:3; Jeremiah 48:37-38; 49:3; Lamentations 2:10; Ezekiel 7:17-18; 27:31; Daniel 9:3; Joel 1:8, 13; Amos 8:10; Job 16:15-16; Psalms 30:11; Psalms 35:13; 69:10-11; 2 Samuel 3:31; 1 Kings 21:27; 2 Kings 6:30; 19:1-2.

  
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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.