Bible

 

Daniel 11

Studie

   

1 And from the first year of Darius the Mede I stood up that he might be strengthened and confirmed.

2 And now I will shew thee the truth. Behold there shall stand yet three kings in Persia, and the fourth shall be enriched exceedingly above them all: and when he shall be grown mighty by his riches, he shall stir up all against the kingdom of Greece.

3 But there shall rise up a strong king, and shall rule with great power: and he shall do what he pleaseth.

4 And when he shall come to his height, his kingdom shall be broken, and it shall be divided towards the four winds of the heaven: but not to his posterity, nor according to his power with which he ruled. For his kingdom shall be rent in pieces, even for strangers, beside these.

5 And the king of the south shall be strengthened, and one of his princes shall prevail over him, and he shall rule with great power: for his dominion shall be great.

6 And after the end of years they shall be in league together: and the daughter of the king of the south shall come to the king of the north to make friendship, but she shall not obtain the strength of the arm, neither shall her seed stand: and she shall be given up, and her young men that brought her, and they that strengthened her in these times.

7 And a plant of the bud of her roots, shall stand up: and he shall come with an army, and shall enter into the province of the king of the north: and he shall abuse them, and shall prevail.

8 And he shall also carry away captive into Egypt their gods, and their graven things, and their precious vessels of gold and silver: he shall prevail against the king of the north.

9 And the king of the south shall enter into the kingdom, and shall return to his own land.

10 And his sons shall be provoked, and they shall assemble a multitude of great forces: and he shall come with haste like a flood: and he shall return and be stirred up, and he shall join battle with his forces.

11 And the king of the south being provoked shall go forth, and shall fight against the king of the north, and shall prepare an exceeding great multitude, and a multitude shall be given into his hand.

12 And he shall take a multitude, and his heart shall be lifted up, and he shall cast down many thousands: but he shall not prevail.

13 For the king of the north shall return and shall prepare a multitude much greater than before: and in the end of times and years, be shall come in haste with a great army, and much riches.

14 And in those times many shall rise up against the king of the south, and the children of prevaricators of thy people shall lift up themselves to fulfil the vision, and they shall fall.

15 And the king of the north shall come, and shall cast up a mount, and shall take the best fenced cities: and the arms of the south shall not withstand, and his chosen ones shall rise up to resist, and they shall not have strength.

16 And he shall come upon him and do according to his pleasure, and there shall be none to stand against his face: and he shall stand in the glorious land, and it shall be consumed by his hand.

17 And he shall set his face to come to possess all his kingdom, and he shall make upright conditions with him: and he shall give him a daughter of women, to overthrow it: and she shall not stand, neither shall she be for him.

18 And he shall turn his face to the islands, and shall take many: and he shall cause the prince of his reproach to cease, and his reproach shall be turned upon him.

19 And he shall turn his face to the empire of his own land, and he shall stumble, and fall, and shall not be found.

20 And there shall stand up in his place, one most vile, and unworthy of kingly honour: and in a few days he shall be destroyed, not in rage nor in battle.

21 And there shall stand up in his place one despised, and the kingly honour shall not be given him: and he shall come privately, and shall obtain the kingdom by fraud.

22 And the arms of the fighter shall be overcome before his face, and shall be broken; yea also the prince of the covenant.

23 And after friendships, he will deal deceitfully with him: and he shall go up, and shall overcome with a small people.

24 And he shall enter into rich and plentiful cities: and he shall do that which his fathers never did, nor his fathers' fathers: he shall scatter their spoils, and their prey, and their riches, and shall forecast devices against the best fenced places: and this until a time.

25 And his strength and his heart shall be stirred up against the king of the south with a great army: and the king of the south shall be stirred up to battle with many and very strong succours: and they shall not stand, for they shall form designs against him.

26 And they that eat bread with him, shall destroy him, and his army shall be overthrown: and many shall fall down slain.

27 And the heart of the two kings shall be to do evil, and they shall speak lies at one table, and they shall not prosper: because as yet the end is unto another time.

28 And he shall return into his land with much riches: and his heart shall be against the holy covenant, and he shall succeed and shall return into his own land.

29 At the time appointed he shall return, and he shall come to the south, but the latter time shall not be like the former.

30 And the galleys and the Romans shall come upon him, and he shall be struck, and shall return, and shall have indignation against the covenant of the sanctuary, and he shall succeed: and he shall return and shall devise against them that have forsaken the covenant of the sanctuary.

31 And arms shall stand on his part, and they shall defile the sanctuary of strength, and shall take away the continual sacrifice, and they shall place there the abomination unto desolation.

32 And such as deal wickedly against the covenant shall deceitfully dissemble: but the people that know their God shall prevail and succeed.

33 And they that are learned among the people shall teach many: and they shall fall by the sword, and by fire, and by captivity, and by spoil for many days.

34 And when they shall have fallen they shall be relieved with a small help: and many shall be joined to them deceitfully.

35 And some of the learned shall fall, that they may be tried, and may be chosen, and made white even to the appointed time, because yet there shall be another time.

36 And the king shall do according to his will, and he shall be lifted up, and shall magnify himself against every god: and he shall speak great things against the God of gods, and shall prosper, till the wrath be accomplished. For the determination is made.

37 And he shall make no account of the God of his fathers: and he shall follow the lust of women, and he shall not regard any gods: for he shall rise up against all things.

38 But he shall worship the god Maozim in his place: and a god whom his fathers knew not, he shall worship with gold, and silver, and precious stones, and things of great price.

39 And he shall do this to fortify Maozim with a strange god, whom he hath acknowledged, and he shall increase glory and shall give them power over many, and shall divide the land gratis.

40 And at the time prefixed the king of the south shall fight against him, and the king of the north shall come against him like a tempest, with chariots, and with horsemen, and with a great navy, and he shall enter into the countries, and shall destroy, and pass through.

41 And he shall enter into the glorious land, and many shall fall: and these only shall be saved out of his hand, Edom, and Moab, and the principality of the children of Ammon.

42 And he shall lay his hand upon the lands: and the land of Egypt shall not escape.

43 And he shall have power over the treasures of gold, and of silver, and all the precious things of Egypt: and he shall pass through Libya, and Ethiopia.

44 And tidings out of the east, and out of the north shall trouble him: and he shall come with a great multitude to destroy and slay many.

45 And he shall fix his tabernacle Apadno between the seas, upon a glorious and holy mountain: and he shall come even to the top thereof, and none shall help him.

   

Ze Swedenborgových děl

 

Arcana Coelestia # 1664

Prostudujte si tuto pasáž

  
/ 10837  
  

1664. That the wars in this chapter mean in the internal sense nothing other than spiritual conflicts, which are temptations, has been stated already in the preliminary section. 1 Nor do the wars in the rest of the Word, especially in the Prophets, have any other meaning. Wars waged by men can have no place whatever in the internal parts of the Word, for such things as wars are not the spiritual and celestial things which alone constitute the Word. That 'wars' in the Word means conflicts with the devil, or what amounts to the same, with hell, becomes clear from the following places besides many others: In John,

They are spirits of demons, performing signs, to go out to the kings of the land and of the whole earth, to assemble them for the war of that great day of God Almighty. Revelation 16:14.

Here anyone may see that no other kind of war on the great day of God Almighty is meant.

[2] In the same book,

The beast that comes up from the Abyss will make war. Revelation 11:7.

Here 'the Abyss' is hell. In the same book,

The dragon was angry with the woman, and went off to make war with the rest of her seed, who kept the commandments of God and bear testimony to Jesus Christ. Revelation 12:17.

It 2 was allowed to make war on the saints. Revelation 13:7.

All these wars are conflicts such as constitute temptations. Nor are the wars of the kings of the south and of the north, and the other wars of Daniel 8, 11, and also those involving Michael, Daniel 10:13, 21; 12:1; Revelation 12:7, anything different.

[3] That wars have no other meaning is clear from the rest of the Prophets as well, as in Ezekiel,

You have not gone up into the breaches and made a hedge for the house of Israel, to stand in war on the day of Jehovah. Ezekiel 13:5.

This refers to the prophets. In Isaiah,

They will beat their swords into hoes, and their spears into pruning-hooks. Nation will not lift up sword against nation, neither will they learn war any more. Isaiah 2:4.

Clearly no other wars [than spiritual wars] are meant here, and therefore instruments of war, such as swords, spears, shields, and many others, mean nothing else in the Word than things that belong to such wars.

[4] In the same prophet,

To the thirsty bring water; O inhabitants of the land of Tema, meet with his bread the fugitive, 3 for they will flee 4 before the swords, before the drawn sword, and before the bent bow, and from the grievousness of war. Isaiah 21:14-15.

In Jeremiah,

Shepherds and their flocks will come against the daughter of Zion, they will pitch their tents against her round about; they will graze, each off his own space. Declare a sacred war against her; arise and let us go up at noon. Jeremiah 6:3-5.

Here, since it is waged against 'the daughter of Zion', that is, the Church, no other kind of war is meant.

[5] In the same prophet,

How is the city of praise not forsaken, the city of My joy? Therefore her young men will fall in her streets, and all the men of war will be cut down on that day. Jeremiah 49:25-26.

'The city of praise and of joy' stands for the things that belong to the Church, 'the men of war' for those who fight.

[6] In Hosea,

I will make for them a covenant on that day, with the wild animals of the field, and with the birds of the air, 5 and with the creeping things of the ground. And I will abolish 6 the bow, and the sword, and war from the land, and I will make them lie down in safety. Hosea 2:18.

Here similarly 'war' stands for conflicts, and the various instruments of war stand for the things belonging to spiritual conflict which are 'broken' when a person comes into the calmness of peace as evil desires and falsities come to an end.

[7] In David,

Behold the works of Jehovah who makes solitary places in the earth, making wars cease even to the end of the earth. He breaks the bow, and snaps the spear, He burns the chariots with fire. Psalms 46:8-9.

Here too the meaning is similar. In the same author,

In Salem is the dwelling-place of God, and His habitation in Zion. There He broke the bow's fiery arrows, the shield and the sword, and war. Psalms 76:2-3.

Because the priests represented the Lord who alone fights on man's behalf, their duties are called military service, Numbers 4:23, 35, 39, 43, 47.

[8] It is a constant truth that Jehovah alone, that is, the Lord, fights and overcomes the devil present with a person when he is involved in the conflicts brought by temptations, even though to that person this does not appear to be so. For evil spirits have no power at all to exert the slightest influence on man unless they are permitted to do so, and angels cannot act to avert anything at all unless enabled to do so by the Lord. Thus it is the Lord alone who endures every conflict and overcomes, something that was also represented at various times by the wars that the children of Israel waged against the nations. That He alone does so is also stated in Moses,

Jehovah your God is going 7 before you, He Himself will fight for you. Deuteronomy 1:30.

In the same book,

Jehovah your God is going 7 with you to fight for you with your enemies, to save you. Deuteronomy 20:4.

[9] So too in Joshua, such as 23:3, 5. For all the wars that were being waged at that time against the idolatrous inhabitants of the land of Canaan represented the Lord's conflicts with hell, and consequently the conflicts of His Church, and of members of the Church. This also accords with the following statements in Isaiah,

As the lion roars, and the young lion, over its prey (when a multitude of shepherds run towards him he is not dismayed by their voice nor daunted by the tumult they make) so Jehovah Zebaoth will come down to fight on Mount Zion and on its hill. Isaiah 31:4.

[10] For the same reasons also Jehovah, or the Lord, is called 'a Man of War', as in Moses,

Jehovah is a Man of War, Jehovah is His name. Exodus 15:3.

In Isaiah,

Jehovah will go forth as a Mighty Man, as a Man of Wars. He will stir up zeal; He will cry out, yes, He will shout aloud, He will prevail over His enemies. Isaiah 42:13.

This also is why many things that war entails are attributed to the Lord, such as 'crying out', and 'shouting aloud' here.

[11] Spirits and angels also appear as men of war, when a representation is being made, as in Joshua,

Joshua lifted up his eyes and saw, and behold, a man was standing before him, with his sword drawn in his hand. He said to Joshua, I am the Prince of the army of Jehovah; and Joshua fell on his face 8 to the earth. Joshua 5:13-14.

These things were seen taking the form they did because they were representative, and this also is why descendants of Jacob called their wars the Wars of ]Jehovah.

It was similar in the Ancient Churches among whom there were books which also were called The Wars of Jehovah, as is clear in Moses.

It is said in the Book of the Wars of Jehovah. Numbers 21:14-15.

These were written about in a way not unlike the wars described in this chapter; but wars involving the Church were meant. Such a manner of writing was common in those times, for they were interior men and their thoughts were of more exalted things.

Poznámky pod čarou:

1. i.e. in 1659

2. i.e. the beast

3. literally, the wanderer

4. literally, they will wander

5. literally,. bird of the heavens (or the skies)

6. literally, break

7. literally, walking

8. literally, faces

  
/ 10837  
  

Thanks to the Swedenborg Society for the permission to use this translation.