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Obadiah 1

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1 Thus said the Lord Jehovah to Edom, A report we have heard from Jehovah, And an ambassador among nations was sent, `Rise, yea, let us Rise against her for battle.'

2 Lo, little I have made thee among nations, Despised [art] thou exceedingly.

3 The pride of thy heart hath lifted thee up, O dweller in clifts of a rock, (A high place [is] his habitation, He is saying in his heart, `Who doth bring me down [to] earth?')

4 If thou dost go up high as an eagle, And if between stars thou dost set thy nest, From thence I bring thee down, An affirmation of Jehovah.

5 If thieves have come in to thee, If spoilers of the night, How hast thou been cut off! Do they not steal their sufficiency? If gatherers have come in to thee, Do they not leave gleanings?

6 How hath Esau been searched out! Flowed out have his hidden things,

7 Unto the border sent thee have all thine allies, Forgotten thee, prevailed over thee, have thy friends, Thy bread they make a snare under thee, There is no understanding in him!

8 Is it not in that day -- an affirmation of Jehovah, That I have destroyed the wise out of Edom, And understanding out of the mount of Esau?

9 And broken down have been thy mighty ones, O Teman, So that every one of the mount of Esau is cut off.

10 For slaughter, for violence [to] thy brother Jacob, Cover thee doth shame, And thou hast been cut off -- to the age.

11 In the day of thy standing over-against, In the day of strangers taking captive his force, And foreigners have entered his gates, And for Jerusalem have cast a lot, Even thou [art] as one of them!

12 And -- thou dost not look on the day of thy brother, On the day of his alienation, Nor dost thou rejoice over sons of Judah, In the day of their destruction, Nor make great thy mouth in a day of distress.

13 Nor come into a gate of My people in a day of their calamity, Nor look, even thou, on its misfortune in a day of its calamity, Nor send forth against its force in a day of its calamity,

14 Nor stand by the breach to cut off its escaped, Nor deliver up its remnant in a day of distress.

15 For near [is] the day of Jehovah, on all the nations, As thou hast done, it is done to thee, Thy deed doth turn back on thine own head.

16 For -- as ye have drunk on My holy mount, Drink do all the nations continually, And they have drunk and have swallowed, And they have been as they have not been.

17 And in mount Zion there is an escape, And it hath been holy, And the house of Jacob have possessed their possessions.

18 And the house of Jacob hath been a fire, And the house of Joseph a flame, And the house of Esau for stubble, And they have burned among them, And they have consumed them, And there is not a remnant to the house of Esau, For Jehovah hath spoken.

19 And they have possessed the south with the mount of Esau, And the low country with the Philistines, And they have possessed the field of Ephraim, And the field of Samaria, And Benjamin with Gilead.

20 And the removed of this force of the sons of Israel, That [is with] the Canaanites unto Zarephat, And the removed of Jerusalem that [is] with the Sepharad, Possess the cities of the south.

21 And gone up have saviours on mount Zion, To judge the mount of Esau, And the kingdom hath been to Jehovah!'

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Arcana Coelestia # 3321

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3321. 'For I am weary' means a state of conflict. This is clear from the meaning of 'weary' or weariness as a state of conflict, dealt with above in 3318. A second reference occurs here to his being weary so as to confirm the point that the joining together of good and truth within the natural is effected by means of spiritual conflicts, that is, by means of temptations. With regard to the joining together of good and truth in the natural, the position in general is that man's rational receives truths before his natural receives them, the reason being that the Lord's life which, as has been stated, is the life of His love, may be able to flow in by way of the rational into the natural, bring order into it, and make it submissive. For the rational is purer, and the natural grosser, or what amounts to the same, the former is interior, the latter exterior. It is according to order - an order that one can know - that the rational is able to flow into the natural, but not the natural into the rational.

[2] Consequently a person's rational is able to be adjusted to truths and to receive them before the natural does. This becomes quite clear from the fact that the rational man with someone who is to be regenerated conflicts greatly with the natural, or what amounts to the same, the internal man does so with the external. For as is also well known, the internal man is able to see truths and also to will them, but the external man refuses to see them and stands opposed to them. For in the natural man there are facts, which are to a great extent derived from the illusions of the senses, and which, although they are falsities, he nevertheless believes to be truths. There are also countless things which the natural man does not grasp, since the natural man, compared with the rational man, is in shade and thick darkness; and the things which the natural man does not grasp are thought not to exist or not to be so. There are also desires in the natural man which are those of self-love and love of the world, and the things which support those desires he calls truths. And when a person gives in to them everything that arises from them is contrary to spiritual truths. Present also are reasonings derived from falsities imprinted since early childhood. What is more, a person comprehends plainly with his senses the things which exist in his natural man, but less so those which exist in his rational until he has shed the body. This also causes him to suppose that the natural constitutes the whole, and what does not fall within the compass of his natural senses he believes to be scarcely anything.

[3] These and many others are the factors which cause the natural man to receive truths much later and with greater difficulty than the rational man receives them. Consequently conflict occurs, which persists for rather a long time and does not end until the recipient vessels of good in the natural man have been softened by means of temptations, as shown above in 3318; for truths are nothing else than recipient vessels of good, 1496, 1832, 1900, 2063, 2261, 2269. The harder those vessels are the more firmly is a person settled in the things referred to above. And the more firmly settled he is, the more serious is the conflict if he is to be regenerated. This therefore being the situation with the natural man - that the joining of truths to good in the natural man is effected by means of the conflicts brought about by temptations - Esau's statement 'I am weary' occurs a second time here.

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