Bible

 

Ezekiel 32

Studie

   

1 It happened in the twelfth year, in the twelfth month, in the first [day] of the month, that the word of Yahweh came to me, saying,

2 Son of man, take up a lamentation over Pharaoh king of Egypt, and tell him, You were likened to a young lion of the nations: yet you are as a monster in the seas; and you did break forth with your rivers, and troubled the waters with your feet, and fouled their rivers.

3 Thus says the Lord Yahweh: I will spread out my net on you with a company of many peoples; and they shall bring you up in my net.

4 I will leave you on the land, I will cast you forth on the open field, and will cause all the birds of the sky to settle on you, and I will satisfy the animals of the whole earth with you.

5 I will lay your flesh on the mountains, and fill the valleys with your height.

6 I will also water with your blood the land in which you swim, even to the mountains; and the watercourses shall be full of you.

7 When I shall extinguish you, I will cover the heavens, and make its stars dark; I will cover the sun with a cloud, and the moon shall not give its light.

8 All the bright lights of the sky will I make dark over you, and set darkness on your land, says the Lord Yahweh.

9 I will also trouble the hearts of many peoples, when I shall bring your destruction among the nations, into the countries which you have not known.

10 Yes, I will make many peoples amazed at you, and their kings shall be horribly afraid for you, when I shall brandish my sword before them; and they shall tremble at every moment, every man for his own life, in the day of your fall.

11 For thus says the Lord Yahweh: The sword of the king of Babylon shall come on you.

12 By the swords of the mighty will I cause your multitude to fall; the terrible of the nations are they all: and they shall bring to nothing the pride of Egypt, and all its multitude shall be destroyed.

13 I will destroy also all its animals from beside many waters; neither shall the foot of man trouble them any more, nor the hoofs of animals trouble them.

14 Then will I make their waters clear, and cause their rivers to run like oil, says the Lord Yahweh.

15 When I shall make the land of Egypt desolate and waste, a land destitute of that of which it was full, when I shall strike all those who dwell therein, then shall they know that I am Yahweh.

16 This is the lamentation with which they shall lament; the daughters of the nations shall lament therewith; over Egypt, and over all her multitude, shall they lament therewith, says the Lord Yahweh.

17 It happened also in the twelfth year, in the fifteenth [day] of the month, that the word of Yahweh came to me, saying,

18 Son of man, wail for the multitude of Egypt, and cast them down, even her, and the daughters of the famous nations, to the lower parts of the earth, with those who go down into the pit.

19 Whom do you pass in beauty? Go down, and be laid with the uncircumcised.

20 They shall fall in the midst of those who are slain by the sword: she is delivered to the sword; draw her away and all her multitudes.

21 The strong among the mighty shall speak to him out of the midst of Sheol with those who help him: they are gone down, they lie still, even the uncircumcised, slain by the sword.

22 Asshur is there and all her company; her graves are all around her; all of them slain, fallen by the sword;

23 whose graves are set in the uttermost parts of the pit, and her company is around her grave; all of them slain, fallen by the sword, who caused terror in the land of the living.

24 There is Elam and all her multitude around her grave; all of them slain, fallen by the sword, who are gone down uncircumcised into the lower parts of the earth, who caused their terror in the land of the living, and have borne their shame with those who go down to the pit.

25 They have set her a bed in the midst of the slain with all her multitude; her graves are around her; all of them uncircumcised, slain by the sword; for their terror was caused in the land of the living, and they have borne their shame with those who go down to the pit: he is put in the midst of those who are slain.

26 There is Meshech, Tubal, and all their multitude; their graves are around them; all of them uncircumcised, slain by the sword; for they caused their terror in the land of the living.

27 They shall not lie with the mighty who are fallen of the uncircumcised, who are gone down to Sheol with their weapons of war, and have laid their swords under their heads, and their iniquities are on their bones; for [they were] the terror of the mighty in the land of the living.

28 But you shall be broken in the midst of the uncircumcised, and shall lie with those who are slain by the sword.

29 There is Edom, her kings and all her princes, who in their might are laid with those who are slain by the sword: they shall lie with the uncircumcised, and with those who go down to the pit.

30 There are the princes of the north, all of them, and all the Sidonians, who are gone down with the slain; in the terror which they caused by their might they are put to shame; and they lie uncircumcised with those who are slain by the sword, and bear their shame with those who go down to the pit.

31 Pharaoh shall see them, and shall be comforted over all his multitude, even Pharaoh and all his army, slain by the sword, says the Lord Yahweh.

32 For I have put his terror in the land of the living; and he shall be laid in the midst of the uncircumcised, with those who are slain by the sword, even Pharaoh and all his multitude, says the Lord Yahweh.

   

Ze Swedenborgových děl

 

Apocalypse Revealed # 49

Prostudujte si tuto pasáž

  
/ 962  
  

49. His feet were like fine brass, as though fired in a furnace. (1:15) This symbolizes natural Divine good.

The Lord's feet symbolize His natural Divinity. Fire or being fired symbolizes goodness. And fine brass symbolizes the natural goodness of truth. Consequently the feet of the Son of Man like fine brass, as though fired in a furnace, symbolize natural Divine good.

His feet have this symbolic meaning because of their correspondence.

Present in the Lord, and so emanating from the Lord, are a celestial Divinity, a spiritual Divinity, and a natural Divinity. His celestial Divinity is meant by the head of the Son of Man; His spiritual Divinity by His eyes and by His breast girded with a golden girdle; and His natural Divinity by His feet.

[2] Because these three elements are present in the Lord, therefore the same three are also present in the angelic heaven. The third or highest heaven exists on the celestial Divine level, the second or middle heaven on the spiritual Divine level, and the first or lowest heaven on the natural Divine level. The like is the case with the church on earth. For the whole of heaven is, in the Lord's sight, like a single person, in which those who are governed by the Lord's celestial Divinity form the head, and those who are governed by His spiritual Divinity form the trunk, while those who are governed by His natural Divinity form the feet.

For this reason, too, every person, having been created in the image of God, has in him the same three degrees, and as they are opened he becomes an angel either of the third heaven, or of the second, or of the last.

It is owing to this also that the Word contains three levels of meaning - a celestial one, a spiritual one, and a natural one.

The reality of this may be seen in Angelic Wisdom Regarding Divine Love and Wisdom, particularly in Part Three, in which we discussed these three degrees.

To be shown that feet, the soles of the feet, and heels correspond to natural attributes in people, and that in the Word, therefore, they symbolize natural attributes, see in Arcana Coelestia (The Secrets of Heaven), published in London, nos. 2162 and 4938-4952.

[3] Natural Divine good is also symbolically meant by feet in the following passages. In Daniel:

I lifted my eyes and looked; behold, a... man clothed in linen garments, whose loins were girded with the gold of Uphaz! And his body was like beryl, and... his eyes like torches of fire, his arms and his feet like the sheen of burnished bronze. (Daniel 10:5-6)

In the book of Revelation:

I saw... an angel coming down from heaven, ...his feet like pillars of fire. (Revelation 10:1)

And in Ezekiel:

(The feet of the cherubim) sparkled like the sheen of burnished bronze. (Ezekiel 1:7)

Angels and cherubim so appeared for the reason that the Lord's Divinity was represented in them.

[4] Since the Lord's church exists below the heavens, thus under the Lord's feet, it is therefore called His footstool in the following places:

The glory of Lebanon shall come to you..., to beautify the place of My sanctuary; ...I will make the place of My feet honorable. And... they shall bow themselves at the soles of your feet. (Isaiah 60:13-14)

Heaven is My throne and the earth is My footstool. (Isaiah 66:1)

(God) does not remember His footstool in the day of His anger. (Lamentations 2:1)

...worship (Jehovah) in the direction of His footstool. (Psalms 99:5)

Behold, we heard of it in Ephrathah (Bethlehem).... We will go into His dwelling places, we will bow ourselves at His footstool. (Psalms 132:6-7)

That is why worshipers fell at the Lord's feet (Matthew 28:9, Mark 5:22, Luke 8:41, John 11:32), and why they kissed His feet and wiped them with their hair (Luke 7:37-38, 44-46, John 11:2; 12:3).

[5] Because feet symbolize the natural self, therefore the Lord said to Peter, when He washed Peter's feet,

He who is washed needs only to have his feet washed, and he is completely clean. (John 13:10)

To wash the feet is to purify the natural self. When it has been purified, the whole self also is purified, as we showed many times in Arcana Coelestia (The Secrets of Heaven), and in The Doctrines of the New Jerusalem. 1 The natural self, which is also the outer self, is purified when it refrains from the evils which the spiritual or inner self sees to be evils and ones to be shunned.

[6] Now because the feet mean the natural component of a person, and this perverts everything if it is not washed or purified, therefore the Lord says,

If your foot causes you to stumble, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life lame, rather than to have two feet and be cast into hell, into the unquenchable fire... (Mark 9:45)

The foot here does not mean the foot, but the natural self.

The like is meant by treading down the good pasture with the feet and troubling waters with the feet (Ezekiel 32:2; 34:18-19, Daniel 7:7, 19, and elsewhere).

[7] Since the Son of Man means the Lord in relation to the Word, it is apparent that His feet mean the Word in its natural sense as well, which we dealt with at length in The Doctrine of the New Jerusalem Regarding the Sacred Scripture, and also that the Lord came into the world to fulfill everything in the Word and to become thereby an embodiment of the Word, even in its outmost expressions (The Doctrine of the New Jerusalem Regarding the Sacred Scripture, nos. 98-100). But this is a secret for people who will be in the New Jerusalem.

[8] The Lord's natural Divinity was also symbolized by the bronze serpent that Moses was commanded to set up in the wilderness, so that all who had been bitten by serpents were healed by looking at it (Numbers 21:6, 8-9). That this symbolized the Lord's natural Divinity, and that those people are saved who look to it, the Lord Himself teaches in John:

As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life. (John 3:14-15)

The serpent was made of bronze because bronze, like fine brass, symbolizes the natural self in respect to good, as may be seen in no. 775 below.

Poznámky pod čarou:

1. Perhaps The Doctrine of the New Jerusalem Regarding the Lord, The Doctrine of the New Jerusalem Regarding the Sacred Scripture, The Doctrine of Life for the New Jerusalem, and The Doctrine of the New Jerusalem Regarding Faith (Amsterdam, 1763). But perhaps The New Jerusalem and its Heavenly Doctrine (London, 1758).

  
/ 962  
  

Many thanks to the General Church of the New Jerusalem, and to Rev. N.B. Rogers, translator, for the permission to use this translation.