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Micah 3

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1 And I said, Hear, I pray you, ye heads of Jacob, and rulers of the house of Israel: is it not for you to know justice?

2 ye who hate the good, and love the evil; who pluck off their skin from off them, and their flesh from off their bones;

3 who also eat the flesh of my people, and flay their skin from off them, and break their bones, and chop them in pieces, as for the pot, and as flesh within the caldron.

4 Then shall they cry unto Jehovah, but he will not answer them; yea, he will hide his face from them at that time, according as they have wrought evil in their doings.

5 Thus saith Jehovah concerning the prophets that make my people to err; that bite with their teeth, and cry, Peace; and whoso putteth not into their mouths, they even prepare war against him:

6 Therefore it shall be night unto you, that ye shall have no vision; and it shall be dark unto you, that ye shall not divine; and the sun shall go down upon the prophets, and the day shall be black over them.

7 And the seers shall be put to shame, and the diviners confounded; yea, they shall all cover their lips; for there is no answer of God.

8 But as for me, I am full of power by the Spirit of Jehovah, and of judgment, and of might, to declare unto Jacob his transgression, and to Israel his sin.

9 Hear this, I pray you, ye heads of the house of Jacob, and rulers of the house of Israel, that abhor justice, and pervert all equity.

10 They build up Zion with blood, and Jerusalem with iniquity.

11 The heads thereof judge for reward, and the priests thereof teach for hire, and the prophets thereof divine for money: yet they lean upon Jehovah, and say, Is not Jehovah in the midst of us? no evil shall come upon us.

12 Therefore shall Zion for your sake be plowed as a field, and Jerusalem shall become heaps, and the mountain of the house as the high places of a forest.

   

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Exploring the Meaning of Micah 3

Durch New Christian Bible Study Staff

In Micah 3:1-3, Micah speaks to the wicked leaders of Jacob and Israel: "Aren’t you supposed to know Judgment? You hate the good and love the evil."

Here, peoples' bones stand for the things they know. Their muscles represent the things they love. The flesh and skin are things about them that are more and more external. 1

And here, Micah is saying that if any of these things, no matter how external, are still good, the evil leaders wish to destroy them.

Micah 3:4. If those destructive leaders cry out to Jehovah for help, He will not hear them.

Micah 3:5-7. These verses are pretty plain as to what they are saying to those wicked leaders: They will end up in darkness. 2 They can prophesy nothing true, because they are so perverted that they know nothing about truth.

In 3:8, Micah says that he has the spirit of Jehovah and can truly prophesy.

In 3:9-11, Micah tells those "heads" and "captains" just how evil they have been, and that still they claim that God is with them. Because they have falsified all truth and good, they can’t tell the difference anymore.

Finally, in verse 12, because of all this, Zion and Jerusalem, meaning the whole of the Israelitish church, will cease to be a representative of the Lord’s ongoing church on earth. 3

Applying this, today... there are a couple of very powerful ideas in this chapter. One is that evil hates good, and wants to destroy even remnants of it. Another scary idea here is that human beings can get to the point of not being able to tell the difference between what's true, and what's false, or between what's good, and what's evil.

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Aus Swedenborgs Werken

 

Arcana Coelestia #3493

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3493. 'And his eyes were becoming dark so that he could not see' means when the Rational wished to enlighten the Natural from the Divine. This is clear from the meaning of 'the eyes' as interior or rational sight, dealt with in 2701, and from the meaning of 'seeing' as recognizing and understanding, dealt with in 2150, 2325, 2807. Consequently when 'the eyes' are said 'to be becoming dark' the meaning is that no discernment exists any longer, in this case no discernment of the things present in the natural. This being the meaning of these words, the fact that the Rational wished to enlighten the Natural from the Divine is meant. What this implies may be seen from the following things stated and shown already about the rational and the natural with man when he is being regenerated: The rational is regenerated before the natural, for the reason that the rational is interior and so closer to the Divine, and also is purer and so more suited to receiving the Divine than the natural is; and for the further reason that the natural has to be regenerated by way of the rational, see 3286, 3288, 3321.

[2] When therefore the rational has been regenerated but not the natural the former in that case seems to itself to be made dark, for no correspondence exists between the two. Actually the rational receives its sight from the light of heaven, whereas the natural receives its sight from the light of the world; but unless a correspondence exists between the two the rational is unable to see anything that is in the natural. Everything there is like shadow or even like thick darkness. But once a correspondence does exist, things that are in light in the natural are then apparent to the rational, for things that belong to the light of the world are then enlightened by those that belong to the light of heaven, which are so to speak shining through. But these matters are more clearly evident from what has been stated and shown already about correspondence see 2987, 2989-2991, 3002, 3138, 3167, 3222, 3223, 3225, 3337, 3485. Through what is stated and shown in these paragraphs one may grasp to some extent that the words 'Isaac's eyes were becoming dark so that he could not see' mean that the Rational wished to enlighten the Natural from the Divine, that is to say, to make even the Natural Divine, for the subject in the highest sense is the Lord. Light is thereby shed on this matter by what occurs with man when he is being regenerated and which has been described already; for man's regeneration is an image of the Lord's glorification, 3043, 3138, 3212, 3296, 3490.

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