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Ezekiel 23

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1 And there is a word of Jehovah unto me, saying, `Son of man,

2 Two women were daughters of one mother,

3 And they go a-whoring in Egypt, In their youth they have gone a-whoring, There they have bruised their breasts, And there they have dealt with the loves of their virginity.

4 And their names [are] Aholah the elder, And Aholibah her sister, And they are Mine, and bear sons and daughters. As to their names -- Samaria [is] Aholah, And Jerusalem [is] Aholibah.

5 And go a-whoring doth Aholah under Me, And she doteth on her lovers, On the neighbouring Assyrians,

6 Clothed with blue -- governors and prefects, Desirable young men all of them, Horsemen, riding on horses,

7 And she giveth her whoredoms on them, The choice of the sons of Asshur, All of them -- even all on whom she doted, By all their idols she hath been defiled.

8 And her whoredoms out of Egypt she hath not forsaken, For with her they lay in her youth, And they dealt with the loves of her virginity, And they pour out their whoredoms on her.

9 Therefore I have given her into the hand of her lovers, Into the hand of sons of Asshur on whom she doted.

10 They have uncovered her nakedness, Her sons and her daughters they have taken, And her by sword they have slain, And she is a name for women, And judgments they have done with her.

11 And see doth her sister Aholibah, And she maketh her doting love more corrupt than she, And her whoredoms than the whoredoms of her sister.

12 On sons of Asshur she hath doted, Governors and prefects, Neighbouring ones -- clothed in perfection, Horsemen, riding on horses, Desirable young men all of them.

13 And I see that she hath been defiled, One way [is] to them both.

14 And she doth add unto her whoredoms, And she seeth graved men on the wall, Pictures of Chaldeans, graved with red lead,

15 Girded with a girdle on their loins, Dyed attire spread out on their heads, The appearance of rulers -- all of them, The likeness of sons of Babylon, Chaldea is the land of their birth.

16 And she doteth on them at the sight of her eyes, And sendeth messengers to them, to Chaldea.

17 And come in unto her do sons of Babylon, To the bed of loves, And they defile her with their whoredoms, And she is defiled with them, And her soul is alienated from them.

18 And she revealeth her whoredoms, And she revealeth her nakedness, And alienated is My soul from off her, As alienated was My soul from off her sister.

19 And she multiplieth her whoredoms, To remember the days of her youth, When she went a-whoring in the land of Egypt.

20 And she doteth on their paramours, Whose flesh [is] the flesh of asses, And the issue of horses -- their issue.

21 Thou lookest after the wickedness of thy youth, In dealing out of Egypt thy loves, For the sake of the breasts of thy youth.

22 Therefore, O Aholibah, thus said the Lord Jehovah: Lo, I am stirring up thy lovers against thee, From whom thy soul hath been alienated, And have brought them in against thee from round about.

23 Sons of Babylon, and of all Chaldea, Pekod, and Shoa, and Koa, All the sons of Asshur with them, Desirable young men, governors and prefects, All of them -- rulers and proclaimed ones, Riding on horses, all of them.

24 And they have come in against thee, With arms, rider, and wheel, And with an assembly of peoples; Target, and shield, and helmet, They do set against thee round about, And I have set before them judgment, They have judged thee in their Judgments.

25 And I have set My jealousy against thee, And they have dealt with thee in fury, Thy nose and thine ears they turn aside, And thy posterity by sword falleth, They, thy sons and thy daughters do take away, And thy posterity is devoured by fire.

26 And they have stripped thee of thy garments, And have taken thy beauteous jewels.

27 And I have caused thy wickedness to cease from thee, And thy whoredoms out of the land of Egypt, And thou liftest not up thine eyes unto them, And Egypt thou dost not remember again.

28 For thus said the Lord Jehovah: Lo, I am giving thee into a hand that thou hast hated, Into a hand from which thou wast alienated.

29 And they have dealt with thee in hatred, And they have taken all thy labour, And they have left thee naked and bare, And revealed hath been the nakedness of thy whoredoms, And the wickedness of thy whoredoms.

30 To do these things to thee, In thy going a-whoring after nations, Because thou hast been defiled with their idols,

31 In the way of thy sister thou hast walked, And I have given her cup into thy hand.

32 Thus said the Lord Jehovah: The cup of thy sister thou dost drink, The deep and the wide one, (Thou art for laughter and for scorn,) Abundant to contain.

33 With drunkenness and sorrow thou art filled, A cup of astonishment and desolation, The cup of thy sister Samaria.

34 And thou hast drunk it, and hast drained [it], And its earthen ware thou dost gnaw, And thine own breasts thou pluckest off, For I have spoken, An affirmation of the Lord Jehovah,

35 Therefore, thus said the Lord Jehovah: Because thou hast forgotten Me, And thou dost cast Me behind thy back, Even thou also bear thy wickedness and thy whoredoms.'

36 And Jehovah saith unto me, `Son of man, Dost thou judge Aholah and Aholibah? Declare then to them their abominations.

37 For they have committed adultery, And blood [is] in their hands, With their idols they committed adultery, And also their sons whom they bore to Me, They caused to pass over to them for food.

38 Again, this they have done to Me, They defiled My sanctuary in that day, And My sabbaths they have polluted.

39 And in their slaughtering their sons to their idols They also come in unto My sanctuary in that day to pollute it, And lo, thus they have done in the midst of My house,

40 And also that they send to men coming from afar, Unto whom a messenger is sent, And lo, they have come in for whom thou hast washed, Painted thine eyes, and put on adornment.

41 And thou hast sat on a couch of honour, And a table arrayed before it, And My perfume and My oil placed on it.

42 And the voice of a multitude at ease [is] with her, And unto men of the common people are brought in Sabeans from the wilderness, And they put bracelets on their hands, And a beauteous crown on their heads.

43 And I say of the worn-out one in adulteries, Now they commit her whoredoms -- she also!

44 And they come in unto her, As the coming in unto a whorish woman, So they have come in unto Aholah, And unto Aholibah -- the wicked women.

45 As to righteous men, they judge them with the judgment of adulteresses, And the judgment of women shedding blood, For they [are] adulteresses, And blood [is] in their hands.

46 For thus said the Lord Jehovah: Bring up against them an assembly, And give them to trembling and to spoiling.

47 And they have cast at them the stone of the assembly, And cut them with their swords, Their sons and their daughters they do slay, And their houses with fire they burn.

48 And I have caused wickedness to cease from the land, And instructed have been all the women, And they do not according to your wickedness.

49 And they have put your wickedness on you, And the sins of your idols ye bear, And ye have known that I [am] the Lord Jehovah!

   

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Apocalypse Revealed # 450

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450. Having breastplates that were fiery, hyacinthine and sulfurous. This symbolizes their fanciful and illusory arguments springing from a hellish love and their own intelligence, and from the attendant lusts.

Breastplates symbolize the arguments people use to do battle for faith alone (no. 436). Fire symbolizes heavenly love, and in an opposite sense, hellish love (nos. 452, 468, 494). Hyacinthine symbolizes intelligence springing from a spiritual love, and in an opposite sense, intelligence springing from a hellish love, which is one's own inherent intelligence, as explained below. And sulfur symbolizes lust arising from that hellish love and expressed through their own inherent intelligence (no. 452). It follows from this that breastplates fiery, hyacinthine and sulfurous have the symbolic meaning stated.

[2] The reason their arguments in defense of faith alone are thus described is that all those people who believe themselves to be justified by faith alone, which is to say, absolved from sins, never give any thought to repentance, and an impenitent person engages in nothing but sins. All sins, moreover, spring from and so draw their character from a hellish love, from one's own inherent intelligence, and from the attendant lusts; and people caught up in them not only act on them, but they also speak, indeed think and will, in conformity with them, and accordingly reason and argue in conformity with them. These are who they are because they are their life; but who they are is a devil, and their life a hellish one.

In actual fact, however, people who live a moral life solely for the sake of themselves and the world do not know this. The reason is that although they inwardly are such as described, in outward appearances they are like people who live a Christian life. But they should know that when anyone of them dies, he comes into his interior life, because it is the life of his spirit, and he is his internal self. Moreover, his inner character then accommodates his outward one to itself, and they become alike. Consequently the moral virtues of these people's life in the world then become like the scales of fish that are scraped away.

The case is altogether different with people who regard the precepts of a moral life as Divine, and who make them at the same time civil precepts because they are expressive of a love for the neighbor.

[3] Hyacinthine symbolizes intelligence springing from the affection of a spiritual love because this color takes its hue from the redness of fire and the whiteness of light; and fire symbolizes love, and light intelligence. This intelligence is symbolically meant by the hyacinthine blue in the coverings and veils of the tabernacle (Exodus 26:31, 36; 27:16), and in Aaron's ephod (Exodus 28:6, 15); by the cloth of hyacinthine blue placed on the ark, table, lampstand, and altar [in the tabernacle] when the people prepared to journey (Numbers 4:6-7, 9, 11-12); and by the blue stuff in Ezekiel 27:7, 24.

On other hand, intelligence springing from the affection of a hellish love is symbolically meant by hyacinthine in Ezekiel 23:

Oholah (or Samaria) played the harlot... and she doted on her lovers, the neighboring Assyrians, clothed in hyacinthine blue..., horsemen riding on horses. (Ezekiel 23:4-6)

Thus is described a church which by the reasonings of its own inherent intelligence had falsified the Word's truths.

And in Jeremiah:

They are altogether foolish and grow stupid; the teaching of vanities is wood. Beaten silver... is brought from Tarshish..., the work of the craftsman and the hands of the metalsmith; hyacinthine blue and purple are their clothing, all the work of skillful men. (Jeremiah 10:8-9)

The work of the craftsman and the hands of the metalsmith, and all the work of skillful men, symbolize here that they spring from their own inherent intelligence.

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