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ထွက်မြောက်ရာ 17

Studie

   

1 ဣသရေလအမျိုးသားပရိသတ်အပေါင်းတို့သည်၊ ထာဝရဘုရား မိန့်တော်မူသည်အတိုင်း၊ သိန်တောထဲက ထွက်၍ ခရီးသွားသဖြင့်၊ ရေဖိဒိမ်အရပ်၌ စားခန်းချကြ၏။ ထိုအရပ်၌ လူများသောက်ဘို့ရာ ရေရှိ။

2 ထိုကြောင့် လူများတို့က၊ သောက်ဘို့ရေပေးပါဟု ဆို၍ မောရှေကို ရန်တွေ့ကြ၏။ မောရှေကလည်း၊ ငါ့ကို အဘယ်ကြောင့် ရန်တွေ့ကြသနည်း။ ထာဝရဘုရားကို အဘယ်ကြောင့် စုံစမ်းကြသနည်းဟု ဆိုလေ၏။

3 လူများတို့သည် ရေငတ်၍ မောရှေကို အပြစ်တင် မြည်တမ်းလျက်၊ ငါတို့မှစ၍ သားသမီးတိရစ္ဆာန်တို့ကို အငတ်ထား၍ သတ်ခြင်းအလိုငှာ၊ အဲဂုတ္တုပြည်မှ အဘယ်ကြောင့် ဆောင်ခဲ့သနည်းဟု ဆိုကြ၏။

4 ထိုအခါ မောရှေသည် ထာဝရဘုရားအား အော်ဟစ်၍၊ ဤလူတို့အား အကျွန်ုပ်သည် အဘယ်သို့ ပြုရပါမည်နည်း။ အကျွန်ုပ်ကို ခဲနှင့် ပစ်လုကြပါပြီဟု လျှောက်လေ၏။

5 ထာဝရဘုရားကလည်း၊ လူများရှေ့သို့သွား၍ ဣသရေလအမျိုး အသက်ကြီးသူတို့ကို ခေါ်လော့။ မြစ်ကို ရိုက်သော သင်၏လှံတံကို ကိုင်လျက်၊ ဟောရပ်အရပ်သို့ သွားလော့။

6 ထိုအရပ်၌ရှိသော ကျောက်ပေါ်တွင် သင့်ရှေ့မှာ ငါရပ်နေမည်။ သင်သည် ထိုကျောက်ကို ရိုက်ရမည်။ လူများသောက်ဘို့ ထိုကျောက်ထဲက ရေထွက်လိမ့်မည်ဟု မောရှေအား မိန့်တော်မူ၏။ မောရှေသည်လည်း ဣသရေလအမျိုး အသက်ကြီးသူတို့ရှေ့မှာ ထိုသို့ပြုလေ၏။

7 ဣသရေလအမျိုးသားတို့က၊ ထာဝရဘုရားသည် ငါတို့တွင် ရှိသလော မရှိလောဟု ထာဝရဘုရားကို စုံစမ်း၍ ရန်တွေ့သောအကြောင်းကြောင့်၊ ထိုအရပ်ကို မဿာနှင့် မေရိဘဟု သမုတ်သတည်း။

8 ထိုအခါ အာမလက်လူတို့သည် လာ၍၊ ရေဖိဒိမ်အရပ်၌ ဣသရေလလူတို့ကို စစ်တိုက်ကြ၏။

9 မောရှေကလည်း၊ လူတို့ကို ရွေး၍ အာမလက်လူတို့ကို စစ်တိုက်ခြင်းငှာ ထွက်လော့။ နက်ဖြန်နေ့၌ ဘုရားသခင်၏လှံတံကို ကိုင်လျက်၊ တောင်ထိပ်ပေါ်မှာ ငါရပ်နေမည်ဟု ယောရှုအားဆို၏။

10 မောရှေမှာလိုက်သည်အတိုင်း ယောရှုပြု၍၊ အာမလက်လူတို့ကို စစ်တိုက်လေ၏။ မောရှေ၊ အာရုန်၊ ဟုရတို့သည် တောင်ထိပ်ပေါ်သို့ တက်ကြ၏။

11 မောရှေသည် လက်ကို ချီသောအခါ၊ ဣသရေလလူတို့သည် နိုင်ကြ၏။ လက်ကို ချသောအခါ၊ အာမလက်လူတို့သည် နိုင်ကြ၏။

12 သို့ရာတွင် မောရှေ၏လက်သည် ညောင်းသောကြောင့်၊ သူတို့သည် ကျောက်ကိုယူ၍ မောရှေကို ထိုင်စေပြီးလျှင်၊ အာရုန်နှင့် ဟုရတို့သည် တယောက်တဘက်နေ၍ သူ၏လက်ကို မကြ၏။ သို့ဖြစ်၍ နေဝင်သည်တိုင်အောင် သူ၏လက်တို့သည် အမြဲနေလေ၏။

13 ယောရှုသည်လည်း အာမလက်မင်းနှင့် လူများတို့ကို ထားလက်နက်ဖြင့် လုပ်ကြံလေ၏။

14 ထာဝရဘုရားကလည်း၊ ဤအမှုကို အောက်မေ့စရာဘို့ စာရေးထား၍ ယောရှုအား ဘတ်ရွတ်လော့။ အကြောင်းမူကား၊ ကောင်းကင်အောက်၌ အာမလက်၏ အမှတ်ရှိသမျှကို ငါပယ်ရှင်းမည်ဟု မောရှေအား မိန့်တော်မူ၏။

15 မောရှေသည်လည်း ယဇ်ပလ္လင်ကို တည်၍၊ ယေဟောဝါနိဿိဟု သမုတ်လေ၏။

16 အကြောင်းမူကား၊ အာမလက်လူမျိုး၏ လက်သည် ထာဝရဘုရား၏ ရာဇပလ္လင်တော်၏ ရန်ဘက်ဖြစ် သောကြောင့်၊ ထာဝရဘုရားသည် ကာလအစဉ်အဆက် အာမလက်အမျိုးကို စစ်တိုက်တော်မူလိမ့်မည်ဟု ဆိုသတည်း။

   

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Arcana Coelestia # 8593

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8593. 'And Amalek came' means falsity arising from interior evil. This is clear from the representation of 'Amalek' as falsity arising from interior evil, dealt with below. Who exactly are steeped in falsity arising from interior evil, and what they are like, must be stated first. Interior evil is that which resides with a person, hidden inwardly. It is concealed in his will and consequently in his thinking, not a trace of it being apparent outwardly, in his actions, speech, or face. People ruled by this kind of evil strive by every method and skill to hide it away, to conceal it under an outward show of being honourable and righteous, and an outward show of love of the neighbour. Nevertheless their only thought is how to inflict harm, and so far as possible to use others to inflict it, taking care to prevent anyone from seeing that they are the instigators. They also disguise actual evil so that it does not look like evil. The greatest delight of their life is to contemplate such things and secretly try to carry them out. This is called interior evil. Those ruled by this evil are called evil genii and in the next life they have been completely separated from those who are ruled by exterior evil and are called spirits. The former - the evil genii - have their hell behind a person, that is, behind his back, where they live in various caverns. But the evil spirits have their hell in front of a person, and also to the sides. The genii belong in the Grand Man to the province of the cerebellum, and also to that part of the spinal cord which sends out the fibres and nerves that control involuntary actions.

[2] One may say further of the falsity arising from this interior evil that it is not like the falsity arising from evil that the evil spirits possess, because it is in itself evil. Those ruled by this evil do not attack the truths of faith but forms of the good of faith. They act through corrupt affections; through these they pervert good thoughts, doing so in a way almost inconceivable. Because they are like this their hells are completely separated from the hells of evil spirits, so completely that they have scarcely any contact with them; and they are separated in order that they may also be separated from members of the spiritual Church. For if they were to flow in from their hells, the member of that Church would be destroyed because they would act very secretly on his conscience and would pervert it, which they would do by inflating his corrupt affections. Those hellish genii never attack a person openly, or when he can offer strong resistance, but when it is seen that the person is slipping and may therefore give in. At this point they are suddenly at hand, and give him a shove so that he falls completely. This is also represented by Amalek's coming up to attack Israel now, as well as at a later time when the children of Israel set themselves against Jehovah and were afraid of the nations in the land of Canaan,

Then also Amalek came down with the Canaanite from the mountain, and struck down the children of Israel as far as Hormah. Numbers 14:43, 45.

[3] From all this one may recognize what those people are like who are represented by Amalek, and the reason for the judgement pronounced over him by Jehovah that war will be waged against them forever and that the memory of them will be wiped out from under heaven, in accordance with the following words in the final verse of the present chapter,

Because the hand of the evil ones is against the throne of Jah, the war of Jehovah will be against Amalek from generation to generation.

And in Deuteronomy,

Remember what Amalek did to you on the way when you came out of Egypt, that he met you on the way, and cut off at your rear all the weak, when you were tired and weary; he did not fear God. When Jehovah your God has given you rest, you shall wipe out the memory of Amalek from under heaven; you shall not forget. Deuteronomy 25:17-19.

Also in the first book of Samuel,

Jehovah declared to Saul through Samuel, I have resolved to punish 1 what Amalek did to Israel, how he set [himself] against him on the way when he came up from Egypt. Therefore go and strike Amalek, and utterly destroy all that he has; do not spare him, but kill man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass. But Saul spared Agag the king, and the best of the flock and the oxen, and of the fatlings, 2 and the rams, and all that was good. Therefore it was declared to Saul that because of this he would no longer be king over Israel. 1 Samuel 15:2-3, 9, 23.

The declaration that the memory of Amalek should be wiped out and that everything there should be utterly destroyed meant that evil genii should have no contact whatever with those belonging to the spiritual Church; for they are in contact with those who are not governed by truths but from an evil affection uphold falsities.

[4] Who can fail to see that except for some more deeply hidden reason Jehovah would never have said that war was to be waged forever against Amalek, that the memory of him was to be wiped out from under heaven, and that everything there was to be utterly destroyed, though all this was not in fact carried out? That more deeply hidden reason why these things were said and done is embodied in Samuel's words to Agag the king of the Amalekites, whom Saul had spared,

Agag the king of Amalek went to Samuel delicately. 3 But Samuel said, As your sword has bereaved women, so shall your mother become the most bereaved of women. And Samuel cut him in pieces before Jehovah. 1 Samuel 15:32-33.

'Going delicately' means the outwardly charming ways that such people have in the presence of others. 'Your sword has bereaved women' means that their falsity does violence to good affections; 'your mother shall become the most bereaved of women' means that evil affection which originates in the will, not in the understanding, will hold sway among them; 'and Samuel cut him in pieces before Jehovah' means that they were separated from those ruled by falsity arising from evil that originated in the understanding, that is, genii were separated from spirits, as stated above. For the meaning of 'women' as affections, see 568, 6014, 8337; and for 'sword' as falsity engaged in conflict and laying waste, 2799, 4499, 7102.

Poznámky pod čarou:

1. literally, visit

2. literally, of the second sort

3. literally, In delights

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

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Arcana Coelestia # 7102

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7102. 'Lest perhaps He fall on us with pestilence and sword' means to avoid the damnation of evil and falsity. This is clear from the meaning of 'lest perhaps He fall on' as lest they run into - into damnation; from the meaning of 'pestilence' as the damnation of evil, dealt with below; and from the meaning of 'sword' as the vastation of truth, and also the punishment of falsity, dealt with in 2799, and so also as damnation, since the punishment of falsity, when truth has been devasted, is damnation.

[2] The Word mentions four kinds of vastation and punishment - sword, famine, evil wild animal, and pestilence. 'Sword' means the vastation of truth and the punishment of falsity; 'famine' the vastation of good and the punishment of evil; 'evil wild animal' the punishment of evil that arises out of falsity; and 'pestilence' the punishment of evil that does not arise out of falsity but out of evil. And since punishment is meant, damnation is meant also, since damnation is the punishment suffered by those who persist in evil. Those four kinds of punishment are referred to as follows in Ezekiel,

. . . when I shall send My four severe 1 judgements - sword, and famine, and evil wild animal, and pestilence - onto Jerusalem, to cut off man and beast from it. Ezekiel 14:21.

In the same prophet,

I will send famine and evil wild animals upon you, and I will make you bereft. And pestilence and blood will pass through you; in particular I will bring the sword upon you. Ezekiel 5:17.

[3] The meaning of 'pestilence' as the punishment of evil and its damnation is evident from the following places: In Ezekiel,

Those in waste places will die by the sword, and the one who is in the open field 2 I will give to the wild animals to devour him, and those who are in fortifications and caverns will die from pestilence. Ezekiel 33:27.

'In waste places dying by the sword' stands for suffering the vastation of truth and consequently the damnation of falsity. 'The one who is in the open field being given to the wild animals to devour him' stands for the damnation of those ruled by evil arising out of falsity. 'Those who are in fortifications and caverns, dying from pestilence' stands for the damnation of evil which uses falsity to fortify itself.

[4] In the same prophet,

The sword is without, and pestilence and famine within; he that is in the field will die by the sword, but him that is in the city famine and pestilence will devour. Ezekiel 7:15.

'The sword' stands for the vastation of truth and the damnation of falsity; 'famine' and 'pestilence' stand for the vastation of good and the damnation of evil. The sword is said to be 'without' and famine and pestilence 'within' because the vastation of truth takes place externally but the vastation of good internally. When however a person leads a life that rests on falsity, damnation is meant by the words 'he that is in the field will die by the sword'; and when a person leads a life ruled by evil which he defends by the use of falsity, damnation is meant by the words 'him that is in the city famine and pestilence will devour'.

[5] In Leviticus,

I will bring upon you a sword executing the vengeance of the covenant; wherever you are gathered into your cities, I will send pestilence into the midst of you, and you will be delivered 3 into the hand of the enemy. When I have cut off your supply of bread 4 ... Leviticus 26:25-26.

Here in a similar way 'a sword' stands for the vastation of truth and the damnation of falsity, 'pestilence' for the damnation of evil. The vastation of good, meant by 'famine', is described when [the Lord] speaks of cutting off their supply of bread. 'Cities' into which they would be gathered has the same meaning as 'the city' just above - falsities that are used to defend evils. For the meaning of 'cities' as truths, and so in the contrary sense as falsities, see 402, 2268, 2712, 2943, 3216, 4492, 4493.

[6] In Ezekiel,

Therefore because you have defiled My sanctuary with all your abominations, a third part of you will die from pestilence, and be annihilated [by famine] in your midst; then a third will fall by the sword around you; finally I will scatter a third to every wind, so that I will draw out a sword after them. Ezekiel 5:11-12.

'Famine' stands for the damnation of evil, 'sword' for the damnation of falsity. 'Scattering to every wind' and 'drawing out a sword after them' stand for getting rid of truths and seizing on falsities.

[7] In Jeremiah,

If they offer burnt offering or minchah, I am not accepting those things, but I will consume those people by sword, famine, and pestilence. Jeremiah 14:12.

In the same prophet,

I will smite the inhabitants of this city, both man and beast; they will die from a great pestilence. Afterwards I will deliver Zedekiah king of Judah, and his servants, and the people, and those in this city left from the pestilence, and from the sword, and from the famine, into the hand of Nebuchadnezzar. He who remains in this city will die by the sword, and by famine, and by pestilence; but he who goes out and defects to the Chaldeans besieging you will live, and his soul will become spoil to him. Jeremiah 21:6-7, 9.

In the same prophet,

I will send sword, famine, and pestilence upon them, till they are consumed from upon the earth. Jeremiah 24:10.

Here also 'sword' means the vastation of truth, 'famine' the vastation of good, and 'pestilence' damnation; and 'sword', 'famine', and 'pestilence' have the same meanings in the following places as well: Jeremiah 27:8; 29:17-18; 32:24, 36; 34:17; 38:2; 42:17, 22; 44:13; Ezekiel 12:16.

[8] Since those three scourges follow in their own particular order [of severity], David was presented by the prophet Gad with the three. He had to choose between the coming of seven years of famine, fleeing three months before his enemies, or three days of pestilence in the land, 2 Samuel 24:13. ('Fleeing before his enemies' implies 'the sword'.) In Amos,

I have sent the pestilence upon you in the way of Egypt, I have killed your young men with the sword, along with your captured horses. 5 Amos 4:10.

'The pestilence in the way of Egypt' stands for the vastation of good by means of falsities, which are 'the way of Egypt'. 'Killing young men with the sword, along with captured horses' stands for the vastation of truth, truths being meant by 'young men' and intellectual concepts by 'horses', 5 2761, 2762, 3217, 5321, 6534.

[9] In Ezekiel,

Pestilence and blood will pass through you. Ezekiel 5:17.

In the same prophet,

I will send upon her pestilence and blood in her streets. Ezekiel 28:23.

Here 'pestilence' stands for good that has been adulterated, and 'blood' for truth that has been falsified. For the meaning of 'blood' as falsified truth, see 4735, 6978.

[10] In David,

You will not be afraid of the terror of the night, of the arrow that flies by day, of the pestilence that creeps in thick darkness, of death that lays waste at noonday. Psalms 91:5-6.

'The terror of the night' stands for falsity which lies concealed; 'the arrow that flies by day' for falsity which is out in the open; 'the pestilence that creeps in thick darkness' for evil which lies concealed; 'death which lays waste at noonday' for evil which is out in the open. The fact that 'pestilence' means evil and the damnation of evil is evident from the use of the word 'death', which is distinguished here from pestilence solely by its being said of death that it 'lays waste at noonday' but of pestilence that it 'creeps in thick darkness'. In the same author,

He opened a way for His anger; He did not spare their soul from death, and He subjected their life to pestilence. Psalms 78:50.

This refers to the Egyptians, 'pestilence' standing for every kind of evil and its damnation.

Poznámky pod čarou:

1. literally, evil

2. literally, upon the face of the field

3. The Latin means I will deliver you but the Hebrew means you will be delivered.

4. literally, While I am about to break the staff of bread for you

5. literally, the captivity of your horses

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