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Ezekiel 21

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1 And the word of the Lord came to me, saying:

2 Son of man, set thy face toward Jerusalem, and let thy speech flow towards the holy places, and prophesy against the land of Israel:

3 And say to the land of Israel: Thus saith the Lord God: Behold I come against thee, and I will draw forth my sword out of its sheath, and will cut off in thee the just, and the wicked.

4 And forasmuch as I have cut off in thee the just, and the wicked, therefore shall my sword go forth out of its sheath against all flesh, from the south even to the north.

5 That all flesh may know that I the Lord have drawn my sword out of its sheath not to be turned back.

6 And thou, son of man, mourn with the breaking of thy loins, and with bitterness sigh before them.

7 And when they shall say to thee: Why mournest thou? thou shalt say: For that which I hear: because it cometh, and every heart shall melt, and all hands shall be made feeble, and every spirit shall faint, and water shall run down every knee: behold it cometh, and it shall be done, saith the Lord God.

8 And the word of the Lord came to me, saying:

9 Son of man, prophesy, and say: Thus saith the Lord God: say: The sword, the sword is sharpened, and furbished.

10 It is sharpened to kill victims: it is furbished that it may glitter: thou removest the sceptre of my son, thou hast cut down every tree.

11 And I have given it to be furbished, that it may be handled: this sword is sharpened, and it is furbished, that it may be in the hand of the slayer.

12 Cry, and howl, 0 son of man, for this sword is upon my people, it is upon all the princes of Israel, that are fled: they are delivered up to the sword with my people, strike therefore upon thy thigh,

13 Because it is tried: and that when it shall overthrow the sceptre, and it shall not be, saith the Lord God.

14 Thou therefore, O son of man, prophesy, and strike thy hands together, and let the sword be doubled, and let the sword of the slain be tripled: this is the sword of a great slaughter, that maketh them stand amazed,

15 And languish in heart, and that multiplieth ruins. In all their gates I have set the dread of the sharp sword, the sword that is furbished to glitter, that is made ready for slaughter.

16 Be thou sharpened, go to the right hand, or to the left, which way soever thou hast a mind to set thy face.

17 And I will clap my hands together, and will satisfy my indignation: I the Lord have spoken.

18 And the word of the Lord came to me, saying:

19 And thou son of man, set thee two ways, for the sword of the king of Babylon to come: both shall come forth out of one land: and with his hand he shall draw lots, he shall consult at the head of the way of the city.

20 Thou shalt make a way that the sword may come to Rabbath of the children of Ammon, and to Juda unto Jerusalem the strong city.

21 For the king of Babylon stood in the highway, at the head of two ways, seeking divination, shuffling arrows: he inquired of the idols, and consulted entrails.

22 On his right hand was the divination for Jerusalem, to set battering rams, to open the mouth in slaughter, to lift up the voice in howling, to set engines against the gates, to cast up a mount, to build forts.

23 And he shall be in their eyes as one consulting the oracle in vain, and imitating the leisure of sabbaths: but he will call to remembrance the iniquity that they may be taken.

24 Therefore thus saith the Lord God: Because you have remembered your iniquity, and have discovered your prevarications, and your sins have appeared in all your devices: because, I say, you have remembered, you shall be taken with the hand.

25 But thou profane wicked prince of Israel, whose day is come that hath been appointed in the time of iniquity:

26 Thus saith the Lord God: Remove the diadem, take off the crown: is it not this that hath exalted the low one, and brought down him that was high?

27 I will shew it to be iniquity, iniquity, iniquity: but this was not done till he came to whom judgment belongeth, and I will give it him.

28 And thou son of man, prophesy, and say: Thus saith the Lord God concerning the children of Ammon, and concerning their reproach, and thou shalt say: sword, O sword, come out of the scabbard to kill, be furbished to destroy, and to glitter,

29 Whilst they see vain things in thy regard, and they divine lies: to bring thee upon the necks of the wicked that are wounded, whose appointed day is come in the time of iniquity.

30 Return into thy sheath. I will judge thee in the place wherein thou wast created, in the land of thy nativity.

31 And I will pour out upon thee my indignation: in the fire of my rage will I blow upon thee, and will give thee into the hands of men that are brutish and contrive thy destruction.

32 Thou shalt be fuel for the fire, thy blood shall be in the midst of the land, thou shalt be forgotten: for I the Lord have spoken it.

   

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Pour out

  

'Pouring out the vials upon the earth, which contained the plagues,' in Revelation 16:1, signifies influx of the reformed into the church, or into people who study and receive the doctrine of justification by faith alone.

(Odkazy: Apocalypse Explained 16; Apocalypse Revealed 676)

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Apocalypse Explained # 1081

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1081. And shall make her desolate and naked, signifies rejection of its falsities, which are falsified truths, and then the manifestation that they were without any truth. This is evident from the signification of "making desolate and naked," as being to reject its falsities, which are falsified truths; and when these have been rejected it is manifest that there is no truth, this also is signified. "To be desolate and naked" signifies to be without any truth, for spiritual vastation and nakedness are signified; and spiritual vastation is like that in a desert where there is no grain and no fruit trees, and spiritual nakedness is like that of a man who has no garments. "Grain and fruit trees" signify knowledges of truth and good, and "garments" signify truths investing; therefore to be without these means to be without any truth. That "nakedness" means deprivation of truth may be seen (n. 240, 1008); and that "vastation," such as exists in a desert, means where there is no truth may be seen n. 730.

(Continuation respecting the Word)

[2] What the Word is as to influx and correspondences can now be illustrated. It is said in John:

He hath blinded their eyes and hardened their heart, lest they should see with their eyes and understand with their heart, and should turn themselves and I should heal them (John 12:40).

The "eyes" that are blinded signify the understanding of truth and the belief in it; the "heart" that is hardened signifies the will and the love of good; and "to be healed" signifies to be reformed. They were not permitted "to turn themselves and be healed" lest they should commit profanation; for an evil man who is healed and who returns to his evil and falsity commits profanation; and so it would have been with the Jewish nation.

[3] In Matthew:

Blessed are your eyes, for they see; and your ears, for they hear (Matthew 13:16).

Here, too, the "eyes" signify the understanding of truth and the belief in it; so "to see" signifies to understand and believe, and the "ears" signify obedience, thus a life according to the truths of faith, and "to hear" signifies to obey and live. For no one is blessed because he sees and hears, but because he understands, believes, obeys, and lives.

[4] In the same:

The lamp of the body is the eye; if the eye be sound the whole body is lucid; if the eye be evil the whole body is darkened. If, therefore, the light [lumen] is darkness, how great is the darkness (Matthew 6:22-23).

Here, again, the "eye" signifies the understanding of truth and the belief in it, which is called a lamp from the light of truth that man has from understanding and belief. And because a man becomes wise from understanding and believing in truth, it is said "if the eye be sound the whole body is lucid." The "body" means the man, and "to be lucid" means to be wise. But it is the reverse with the "evil eye," that is, understanding and believing in falsity. "Darkness" means falsities, "if the light [lumen] be darkness" signifies if the truth be false or falsified, and because truth falsified is worse than any other falsity, it is said, "If the light [lumen] be darkness, how great is the darkness."

[5] These few examples make clear what correspondence is and what influx is, namely, that the eye is a correspondence of the understanding and faith, the heart a correspondence of the will and love, the ears a correspondence of obedience, the lamp and light [lumen] correspondences of truth, and darkness a correspondence of falsity, and so on; and as the one is spiritual and the other natural, and the spiritual acts into the natural and forms it to an image of itself that it may appear before the eyes or before the world, therefore that action is influx. Such is the Word in each and every particular.

  
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Thanks to the Swedenborg Foundation for their permission to use this translation.