2
Our inheritance is turned to strangers, our houses to aliens.
Apocalypse Revealed # 620
620. 14:4 These are the ones who were not defiled with women, for they are virgins. This symbolically means that they did not adulterate the church's truths or defile them with the falsities of their faith, but loved the truths because they are true.
A woman symbolizes the church from an affection for truth, and so in an opposite sense the church from an affection for falsity, as may be seen in nos. 434, 533 above - here the church from an affection for truth, because we are told that they were not defiled with women. Being defiled with women has the same symbolic meaning as committing adultery and behaving licentiously. To commit adultery and behave licentiously means, symbolically, to adulterate and falsify the Word, as may be seen in no. 134 above.
For they are virgins means, symbolically, because they have loved truths because they are true, thus loving them from a spiritual affection. These are meant by virgins because a virgin symbolizes the church as a bride who desires to be conjoined with the Lord and to become a wife; and a church that desires to be conjoined with the Lord loves truths because they are true. For truths bring about conjunction when people live in accordance with them.
That is why Israel, Zion and Jerusalem are called in the Word virgins and daughters; for Israel, Zion and Jerusalem symbolize the church.
[2] People in the Lord's church who are of such a character are all meant by virgins, whether they are maidens or youths, wives or husbands, boys or old men, girls or old ladies, and this can be seen from places in the Word where virgins are mentioned, such as the virgin of Israel (Jeremiah 18:13; 31:4, 21, Amos 5:2, Joel 1:8); the virgin daughter of Judah (Lamentations 1:15); the virgin daughter of Zion (2 Kings 19:21, Isaiah 37:22, Lamentations 1:4; 2:13); the virgins of Jerusalem (Lamentations 2:10); the virgin of My people (Jeremiah 14:17).
For that reason the Lord likened the church to ten virgins (Matthew 25:1-13), and we read in Jeremiah:
...I will build you, that you may be rebuilt, O virgin of Israel! You shall again... go forth in the dances of those who rejoice. (Jeremiah 31:4, 13)
And in the book of Psalms:
They have seen Your goings, O God, the goings of my God, my King, in the sanctuary..., in the midst of maidens playing timbrels. (Psalms 68:24-25)
And elsewhere:
Kings' daughters are among Your precious ones; at Your right hand stands the queen in pure gold from Ophir.
Listen, O daughter, and see... The King will delight in your beauty... The daughter of Tyre also will bring a gift; the rich among the people will appease Your face.
The King's daughter is all precious within; her clothing is woven with gold. She shall be brought to the King in embroidered garments. The virgins after her, her companions, shall come... into the palace of the King. (Psalms 45:9-15)
The King there means the Lord; the queen the church as a wife; and the daughters and virgins affections for goodness and truth.
[3] Similar affections are symbolically meant by virgins elsewhere in the Word in places where young men are mentioned at the same time, because young men symbolize truths, and virgins affections for those truths. For instance, in the following places:
Behold, the days are coming... that I will send a famine on the land, not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of Jehovah... In that day the fair virgins and young men shall faint from thirst. (Amos 8:11, 13)
Be ashamed, O Sidon; ...the sea has said..., "I have not travailed or given birth; neither have I reared young men or brought up virgins." (Isaiah 33:4)
The Lord trampled a winepress for the virgin daughter of Zion... Behold my sorrow; the virgins and the young men have gone into captivity. (Lamentations 1:4, 15, 18)
...how great is His goodness, and how great His beauty! Grain shall make the young men grow up, and new wine the young women. (Zechariah 9:17)
The streets of the city shall be full of boys and girls playing in My streets. (Zechariah 8:5)
They sit on the ground..., the virgins of Jerusalem... To what shall I liken you..., O virgin daughter of Zion... ...They lay... in the streets..., My virgins and My young men... (Lamentations 2:10, 13, 21)
And so on elsewhere, as in Jeremiah 51:20-23, Lamentations 5:11, 13, 14, Ezekiel 9:4, 6, Psalms 78:62-64, Deuteronomy 32:25.
Jeremiah 31
1
At that time, says Yahweh, will I be the God of all the families of Israel, and they shall be my people.
2
Thus says Yahweh, The people who were left of the sword found favor in the wilderness; even Israel, when I went to cause him to rest.
3
Yahweh appeared of old to me, [saying], Yes, I have loved you with an everlasting love: therefore with loving kindness have I drawn you.
4
Again will I build you, and you shall be built, O virgin of Israel: again you shall be adorned with your tambourines, and shall go forth in the dances of those who make merry.
5
Again you shall plant vineyards on the mountains of Samaria; the planters shall plant, and shall enjoy [its fruit].
6
For there shall be a day, that the watchmen on the hills of Ephraim shall cry, Arise, and let us go up to Zion to Yahweh our God.
7
For thus says Yahweh, Sing with gladness for Jacob, and shout for the chief of the nations: publish, praise, and say, Yahweh, save your people, the remnant of Israel.
8
Behold, I will bring them from the north country, and gather them from the uttermost parts of the earth, [and] with them the blind and the lame, the woman with child and her who travails with child together: a great company shall they return here.
9
They shall come with weeping; and with petitions will I lead them: I will cause them to walk by rivers of waters, in a straight way in which they shall not stumble; for I am a father to Israel, and Ephraim is my firstborn.
10
Hear the word of Yahweh, you nations, and declare it in the islands afar off; and say, He who scattered Israel will gather him, and keep him, as shepherd does his flock.
11
For Yahweh has ransomed Jacob, and redeemed him from the hand of him who was stronger than he.
12
They shall come and sing in the height of Zion, and shall flow to the goodness of Yahweh, to the grain, and to the new wine, and to the oil, and to the young of the flock and of the herd: and their soul shall be as a watered garden; and they shall not sorrow any more at all.
13
Then shall the virgin rejoice in the dance, and the young men and the old together; for I will turn their mourning into joy, and will comfort them, and make them rejoice from their sorrow.
14
I will satiate the soul of the priests with fatness, and my people shall be satisfied with my goodness, says Yahweh.
15
Thus says Yahweh: A voice is heard in Ramah, lamentation, and bitter weeping, Rachel weeping for her children; she refuses to be comforted for her children, because they are no more.
16
Thus says Yahweh: Refrain your voice from weeping, and your eyes from tears; for your work shall be rewarded, says Yahweh; and they shall come again from the land of the enemy.
17
There is hope for your latter end, says Yahweh; and [your] children shall come again to their own border.
18
I have surely heard Ephraim bemoaning himself [thus], You have chastised me, and I was chastised, as a calf unaccustomed [to the yoke]: turn me, and I shall be turned; for you are Yahweh my God.
19
Surely after that I was turned, I repented; and after that I was instructed, I struck on my thigh: I was ashamed, yes, even confounded, because I did bear the reproach of my youth.
20
Is Ephraim my dear son? is he a darling child? for as often as I speak against him, I do earnestly remember him still: therefore my heart yearns for him; I will surely have mercy on him, says Yahweh.
21
Set up road signs, make guideposts; set your heart toward the highway, even the way by which you went: turn again, virgin of Israel, turn again to these your cities.
22
How long will you go here and there, you backsliding daughter? for Yahweh has created a new thing in the earth: a woman shall encompass a man.
23
Thus says Yahweh of Armies, the God of Israel, Yet again shall they use this speech in the land of Judah and in its cities, when I shall bring again their captivity: Yahweh bless you, habitation of righteousness, mountain of holiness.
24
Judah and all its cities shall dwell therein together, the farmers, and those who go about with flocks.
25
For I have satiated the weary soul, and every sorrowful soul have I replenished.
26
On this I awakened, and saw; and my sleep was sweet to me.
27
Behold, the days come, says Yahweh, that I will sow the house of Israel and the house of Judah with the seed of man, and with the seed of animal.
28
It shall happen that, like as I have watched over them to pluck up and to break down and to overthrow and to destroy and to afflict, so will I watch over them to build and to plant, says Yahweh.
29
In those days they shall say no more, The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children's teeth are set on edge.
30
But everyone shall die for his own iniquity: every man who eats the sour grapes, his teeth shall be set on edge.
31
Behold, the days come, says Yahweh, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah:
32
not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt; which my covenant they broke, although I was a husband to them, says Yahweh.
33
But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says Yahweh: I will put my law in their inward parts, and in their heart will I write it; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people:
34
and they shall teach no more every man his neighbor, and every man his brother, saying, Know Yahweh; for they shall all Know me, from the least of them to the greatest of them, says Yahweh: for I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin will I remember no more.
35
Thus says Yahweh, who gives the sun for a light by day, and the ordinances of the moon and of the stars for a light by night, who stirs up the sea, so that its waves roar; Yahweh of Armies is his name:
36
If these ordinances depart from before me, says Yahweh, then the seed of Israel also shall cease from being a nation before me forever.
37
Thus says Yahweh: If heaven above can be measured, and the foundations of the earth searched out beneath, then will I also cast off all the seed of Israel for all that they have done, says Yahweh.
38
Behold, the days come, says Yahweh, that the city shall be built to Yahweh from the tower of Hananel to the gate of the corner.
39
The measuring line shall go out further straight onward to the hill Gareb, and shall turn about to Goah.
40
The whole valley of the dead bodies and of the ashes, and all the fields to the brook Kidron, to the corner of the horse gate toward the east, shall be holy to Yahweh; it shall not be plucked up, nor thrown down any more forever.
