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Jeremiah 50

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1 The word that the LORD spoke against Babylon and against the land of the Chaldeans by Jeremiah the prophet.

2 Declare ye among the nations, and publish, and set up a standard; publish, and conceal not: say, Babylon is taken, Bel is confounded, Merodach is broken in pieces; her idols are confounded, her images are broken in pieces.

3 For out of the north there cometh a nation against her, which shall make her land desolate, and none shall dwell in it, they shall remove, they shall depart, both man and beast.

4 In those days, and in that time, saith the LORD, the children of Israel shall come, they and the children of Judah together, going and weeping; they shall go, and seek the LORD their God.

5 They shall ask the way to Zion with their faces towards it, saying, Come, and let us join ourselves to the LORD in a perpetual covenant that shall not be forgotten.

6 My people have been lost sheep: their shepherds have caused them to go astray, they have turned them away on the mountains: they have gone from mountain to hill, they have forgotten their resting-place.

7 All that found them have devoured them: and their adversaries said, We offend not, because they have sinned against the LORD, the habitation of justice, even the LORD, the hope of their fathers.

8 Remove out of the midst of Babylon, and go forth from the land of the Chaldeans, and be as the he-goats before the flocks.

9 For lo, I will raise and cause to come against Babylon an assembly of great nations from the north country: and they shall set themselves in array against her; from thence she shall be taken: their arrows shall be as of a mighty expert man; none shall return in vain.

10 And Chaldea shall be a spoil: all that spoil her shall be satisfied, saith the LORD.

11 Because ye were glad, because ye rejoiced, O ye destroyers of my heritage, because ye are grown fat as the heifer at grass, and bellow as bulls;

12 Your mother shall be greatly confounded; she that bore you shall be ashamed: behold, the hindermost of the nations shall be a wilderness, a dry land, and a desert.

13 Because of the wrath of the LORD it shall not be inhabited, but it shall be wholly desolate: every one that goeth by Babylon shall be astonished, and hiss at all her plagues.

14 Put yourselves in array against Babylon on every side: all ye that bend the bow, shoot at her, spare no arrows: for she hath sinned against the LORD.

15 Shout against her on every side; she hath given her hand: her foundations are fallen, her walls are thrown down: for it is the vengeance of the LORD: take vengeance upon her; as she hath done, do to her.

16 Cut off the sower from Babylon, and him that handleth the sickle in the time of harvest: for fear of the oppressing sword they shall turn every one to his people, and they shall flee every one to his own land.

17 Israel is a scattered sheep; the lions have driven him away: first the king of Assyria hath devoured him; and last this Nebuchadrezzar king of Babylon hath broken his bones.

18 Therefore thus saith the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel; Behold, I will punish the king of Babylon and his land, as I have punished the king of Assyria.

19 And I will bring Israel again to his habitation, and he shall feed on Carmel and Bashan, and his soul shall be satisfied upon mount Ephraim and Gilead.

20 In those days, and in that time, saith the LORD, the iniquity of Israel shall be sought for, and there shall be none; and the sins of Judah, and they shall not be found: for I will pardon them whom I reserve.

21 Go up against the land of Merathaim, even against it, and against the inhabitants of Pekod: waste and utterly destroy after them, saith the LORD, and do according to all that I have commanded thee.

22 A sound of battle is in the land, and of great destruction.

23 How is the hammer of the whole earth cut asunder and broken! how is Babylon become a desolation among the nations!

24 I have laid a snare for thee, and thou art also taken, O Babylon, and thou wast not aware: thou art found, and also caught, because thou hast striven against the LORD.

25 The LORD hath opened his armory, and hath brought forth the weapons of his indignation: for this is the work of The LORD GOD of hosts in the land of the Chaldeans.

26 Come against her from the utmost border, open her store-houses: cast her up as heaps, and destroy her utterly: let nothing of her be left.

27 Slay all her bullocks; let them go down to the slaughter: woe to them! for their day is come, the time of their visitation.

28 The voice of them that flee and escape from the land of Babylon, to declare in Zion the vengeance of the LORD our God, the vengeance of his temple.

29 Call together the archers against Babylon: all ye that bend the bow, encamp against it on every side; let none thereof escape: recompense her according to her work; according to all that she hath done, do to her: for she hath been proud against the LORD, against the Holy One of Israel.

30 Therefore her young men shall fall in the streets, and all her men of war shall be cut off in that day, saith the LORD.

31 Behold, I am against thee, O thou most proud, saith the Lord GOD of hosts: for thy day is come, the time that I will visit thee.

32 And the most proud shall stumble and fall, and none shall raise him up: and I will kindle a fire in his cities, and it shall devour all around him.

33 Thus saith the LORD of hosts; The children of Israel and the children of Judah were oppressed together: and all that took them captives held them fast; they refused to let them go.

34 Their Redeemer is strong; the LORD of hosts is his name: he will thoroughly plead their cause, that he may give rest to the land, and disquiet the inhabitants of Babylon.

35 A sword is upon the Chaldeans, saith the LORD, and upon the inhabitants of Babylon, and upon her princes, and upon her wise men.

36 A sword is upon the liars; and they shall be sottish: a sword is upon her mighty men; and they shall be dismayed.

37 A sword is upon their horses, and upon their chariots, and upon all the mingled people that are in the midst of her; and they shall become as women: a sword is upon her treasures; and they shall be robbed.

38 A drouth is upon her waters; and they shall be dried up: for it is the land of graven images, and they are mad upon their idols.

39 Therefore the wild beasts of the desert with the wild beasts of the isles, shall dwell there, and the owls shall dwell therein: and it shall be no more inhabited for ever; neither shall it be dwelt in from generation to generation.

40 As God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah and the neighboring cities, saith the LORD; so shall no man abide there, neither shall any son of man dwell therein.

41 Behold, a people shall come from the north, and a great nation, and many kings shall be raised up from the borders of the earth.

42 They shall hold the bow and the lance: they are cruel, and will not show mercy: their voice shall roar like the sea, and they shall ride upon horses, every one put in array, like a man to the battle, against thee, O daughter of Babylon.

43 The king of Babylon hath heard the report of them, and his hands became feeble: anguish took hold of him, and pangs as of a woman in travail.

44 Behold, he shall come up like a lion from the swelling of Jordan to the habitation of the strong: but I will make them suddenly run away from her: and who is a chosen man, that I may appoint over her? for who is like me? and who will appoint me the time? and who is that shepherd that will stand before me?

45 Therefore hear ye the counsel of the LORD, that he hath taken against Babylon; and his purposes, that he hath purposed against the land of the Chaldeans: Surely the least of the flock shall draw them out: surely he shall make their habitation desolate with them.

46 At the noise of the taking of Babylon the earth is moved, and the cry is heard among the nations.

   

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Arcana Coelestia # 2025

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2025. That 'I will give to you, and to your seed after you, the land of your sojournings' means that the Lord acquired to Himself by His own powers all things meant by 'the land of sojournings' is clear from the meaning of 'sojourning' as receiving instruction, dealt with in 1463. And because man acquires life to himself chiefly through instruction in facts, matters of doctrine, and cognitions of faith, sojourning is consequently the life so acquired. When applied to the Lord it is the life which He obtained for Himself through cognitions, through the conflicts that constituted temptations, and through victories in temptations; and because He obtained it by His own powers, this is what 'the land of your sojournings' means here.

[2] That the Lord obtained all things for Himself by His own powers, and by His own powers united the Human Essence to the Divine Essence and Divine Essence to Human Essence, and that He alone in this way became righteousness, is quite clear in the Prophets, as in Isaiah,

Who is this coming from Edom, marching in the vast numbers of His strength? I have trodden the winepress alone, and from the peoples no one was with Me. I looked around and there was no one helping; and I was astonished that there was no one upholding; therefore My own arm brought Me salvation. Isaiah 63:1, 3, 5.

'Edom' stands for the Lord's Human Essence, 'strength' and 'arm' for power. Plain statements to the effect that He acted from His own power are contained in the phrases 'no one helping' and 'no one upholding', and in that about His own arm bringing Him salvation.

[3] In the same prophet,

He saw that there was no one, and wondered that there was nobody to intercede; and His own arm brought salvation to Him, and His righteousness upheld Him. And He put on righteousness as a breastplate, and a helmet of salvation on His head. Isaiah 59:16-17.

This similarly means that He acted by His own power, and in so doing became righteousness. That the Lord is righteousness is stated in Daniel,

Seventy weeks have been decreed to atone for iniquity, and to bring in everlasting righteousness, and to seal up vision and prophet, and to anoint the Most Holy Place. Daniel 9:24.

And in Jeremiah,

I will raise up for David a righteous branch, and He will reign as king and act with understanding, and He will execute judgement and righteousness in the land. In His days Judah will be saved, and Israel will dwell in confidence. And this is His name which they will call Him, Jehovah our Righteousness. Jeremiah 23:5-6; 33:15-16.

For this reason He is also called 'the Habitation of Righteousness' in Jeremiah 31:23; 50:7, and 'wonderful' and 'Hero' in Isaiah 9:6.

[4] The reason why the Lord so many times attributes to the Father that which is His own has been explained above in 1999, 2004; for Jehovah was within Him, and so within every single part of Him. Something similar in man may be used for illustration, although there can be no comparison. Within man is his soul, and because it is within him, the soul is within every individual part of him, that is to say, within every individual part of his thinking and every individual part of his activity. Anything that does not have his soul within it is not part of him. The Lord's soul was Life itself or Being (Esse) itself, which is Jehovah, for He was conceived from Jehovah; thus Life itself was present within every individual part of Him. And because Life itself, or Being (Esse) itself, which is Jehovah, belonged to Him in the way that the soul does to man, so that which was Jehovah's was His, which is what the Lord says in His statements about His being in the bosom of the Father, John 1:18, and about all things that the Father has being His, John 16:15; 17:10-11.

[5] From good which is Jehovah's He united the Divine Essence to the Human Essence, and from truth united the Human Essence to the Divine Essence, and so achieved every single thing all from Himself. Indeed His Human was left to Itself in order that of Himself He might fight against all the hells and overcome them; and because He had life within Himself, as stated, which was His own, He overcame them by His own power and strength, as is also clearly stated in the places quoted from the Prophets. So then, because He acquired all things to Himself by His own powers, He became Righteousness, cleared the world of spirits of hellish genii and spirits, and in so doing rescued the human race from destruction - for the human race is governed by means of spirits - and thus redeemed it. This is why the Old Testament Word speaks so often of Him as Rescuer and Redeemer, and also Saviour, as His name Jesus describes.

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

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Arcana Coelestia # 2504

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2504. 'And he sojourned in Gerar' means consequent instruction in the spiritual things of faith. This is clear from the meaning of 'sojourning' as receiving instruction, dealt with in 1463, 2025, and from the meaning of 'Gerar' as the spiritual entity of faith. Gerar is mentioned in several places in Genesis, as in Chapter 10:19; 26:1, 6, 17, 20, 26, and in those places it means faith, the reason being that Gerar was in Philistia, and 'Philistia' means knowledge of the cognitions of faith, see 1197, 1198. Gerar was also the place where the king of the Philistines used to live. Consequently 'Gerar' means faith itself, 1209, and 'the king of Gerar' the truth itself of faith, for 'a king' in the internal sense is truth, 1672, 2015, 2069. Thus 'Abimelech' who is the subject in what follows means the doctrine of faith.

[2] In general there are intellectual things of faith, rational things of faith, and factual things of faith. In relation to one another they accordingly pass from more interior to more exterior. The inmost things of faith are called intellectual; those which pass down from them or from there are the rational things of faith; and those in turn which pass down from these are the factual things of faith. They are interrelated, to use the language of the learned, as prior to posterior, or what amounts to the same, as superior to inferior, that is, as more interior to more exterior. It does indeed seem to man as though the factual degree of faith is first and that the rational then arises from that, and after this the intellectual from that, for the reason that this is the way a human being develops from childhood onwards. But in fact the intellectual is constantly flowing; into the rational, and the rational into the factual, though man is not directly conscious of it. In childhood the influx is obscure; in adult years it is more noticeable; and when at length the individual has been regenerated it is quite manifest. Once he is regenerate this order is quite apparent, and still more fully so in the next life, see 1495. All of these things, distinguished as described into separate degrees and existing in relation to one another in the order shown, are called spiritual. The spiritual things of faith constitute all truths that stem from good, that is, from a celestial origin. Whatever derives from the celestial is one of the spiritual things of faith.

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