Bibliorum

 

Ezekiel 26

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1 And it came to pass in the eleventh year, the first day of the month, that the word of the Lord came to me, saying:

2 Son of man, because Tyre hath said of Jerusalem: Aha, the gates of the people are broken, she is turned to me: I shall be filled, now she is laid waste.

3 Therefore thus saith the Lord God: Behold I come against thee, O Tyre, and I will cause many nations to come up to thee, as the waves of the sea rise up.

4 And they shall break down the walls of Tyre, and destroy the towers thereof: and I will scrape her dust from her, and make her like a smooth rock.

5 She shall be a drying place for nets in the midst of the sea, because I have spoken it, saith the Lord God: and she shall be a spoil to the nations.

6 Her daughters also that are in the field, shall be slain by the sword: and they shall know that I am the Lord.

7 For thus saith the Lord God: Behold I will bring against Tyre Nabuchodonosor king of Babylon, the king of kings, from the north, with horses, and chariots, and horsemen, and companies, and much people.

8 Thy daughters that are in the field, he shall kill with the sword: and he shall compass thee with forts, and shall cast up a mount round about: and he shall lift up the buckler against thee.

9 And he shall set engines of mar and battering rams against thy walls, and shall destroy thy towers with his arms.

10 By reason of the multitude of his horses, their dust shall cover thee: thy walls shall shake at the noise of the horsemen, and wheels, and chariots, when they shall go in at thy gates, as by the entrance of a city that is destroyed.

11 With the hoofs of his horses he shall tread down all thy streets: thy people he shall kill with the sword, and thy famous statues shall fall to the ground.

12 They shall waste thy riches, they shall make a spoil of thy merchandise: and they shall destroy thy walls, and pull down thy fine houses: and they shall lay thy stones and thy timber, and thy dust in the midst of the waters.

13 And I will make the multitude of thy songs to cease, and the sound of thy harps shall be heard no more.

14 And I will make thee like a naked rock, then shalt be a drying place for nets, neither shalt thou be built any more: for I have spoken it, saith. the Lord God.

15 Thus saith the Lord God to Tyre: Shall not the islands shake at the sound of thy fall, and the groans of thy slain when they shall be killed in the midst of thee?

16 Then all the princes of the sea shall come down from their thrones: and take off their robes, and cast away their broidered garments, and be clothed with astonishment: they shall sit on the ground, and with amazement shall wonder at thy sudden fall.

17 And taking up a lamentation over thee, they shall say to thee: How art thou fallen, that dwellest in the sea, renowned city that wast strong in the sea, with thy inhabitants whom all did dread?

18 Now shall the ships be astonished in the day of thy terror: and the islands in the sea shall be troubled because no one cometh out of thee.

19 For thus saith the Lord God: When I shall make thee a desolate city like the cities that are not inhabited: and shall bring the deep upon thee, and many waters shall cover thee:

20 And when I shall bring thee down with those that descend into the pit to the everlasting people, and shall set thee in the lowest parts of the earth, as places desolate of old, with them that are brought down into the pit, that thou be not inhabited: and when I shall give glory in the land of the living,

21 I will bring thee to nothing, and thou shalt not be, and if thou be sought for, thou shalt not be found any more for ever, saith the Lord God.

   

Commentarius

 

Garment

  

A garment of the entwinings of gold and of needlework, as in Psalm 45:13, signifies the Lord's divine truth.

A garment down to the foot, as in Revelation 1:13, signifies the leading divine which is divine truth.

It is said, in Deuteronomy 22:11, "Thou shalt not wear a garment of diverse sorts; as of woolen and linen together…”. This means that the states of good and truth should not be mixed up: people in the spiritual kingdom of the Lord cannot be also in His celestial kingdom at the same time, and vice versa.

(Notae: Arcana Coelestia 10669)


from the Writings of Emanuel Swedenborg

 

Arcana Coelestia #10669

Studere hoc loco

  
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10669. 'In ploughing and harvesting you shall rest' means so far as the implanting of truth in good and the reception of that truth are concerned. This is clear from the meaning of 'ploughing' as the implanting of truth in good, dealt with below; and from the meaning of 'harvesting' as the reception of truth in good. 'Harvesting' has this meaning because 'standing grain' means truth in the process of being conceived, 9146, and 'an ear' means truth, the container [of good], while 'wheat' or 'barley' in the ear means good, receiving and also received by [truth]. What should be understood at present however is that human labour involved in this kind of harvesting will cease, since it says, 'In ploughing and harvesting you shall rest'. For by 'rest' on the sabbath day the second state of regeneration is meant, when a person experiences peace, abides in heaven, and is led by the Lord, at which stage those things are brought about without labour or effort on man's part.

'Harvest' means the reception of truth by good, see 9295.

'The sabbath' means a state of peace, when a person is led by the Lord, in the places referred to in 10668.

[2] The reason why 'ploughing' means the implanting of truth in good is that the Church in respect of good, thus also the Church's good, is meant by 'the field', and the truth of faith by 'the seed' that is sown in it.

'The field' means the Church in respect of good, see 2971, 3196, 3310, 3317, 7502, 9139, 9141, 9295.

'Seed' means the truth of faith, 1940, 3310, 3373, 3671, 6158.

[3] Reference is made very many times in the Word to earth or land, ground, field, seedtime, harvest, standing grain, threshing-floor, grain, wheat, and barley; and in those places they mean the kinds of things that are involved in the establishment of the Church and that are involved in the regeneration of a person who is in the Church, thus the kinds of things that are connected with the truth of faith and the good of love which constitute the Church. The reason why those kinds of things are meant lies in correspondence; for all things on this planet, including those in its vegetable kingdom, correspond to spiritual realities that exist in heaven, as is plainly evident from the things which appear there. For in heaven newly ploughed fields, open ones, gardens of flowers, fields ready to be harvested, land planted with trees, and similar things such as exist on earth are seen; and it is well known to those who are there that the realities composing heaven, thus those composing the Church, are what appear before their eyes in this kind of way.

[4] A person reading the Word thinks that such things there are no more than metaphors. But they should be seen to be real correspondences, as with the following in Isaiah,

Listen and hear my voice. Is it all day that the ploughman will plough to sow? That he will open and harrow his ground? When he has levelled its surface 1 does he not scatter the black cummin and sow the cummin? So [the reaper] stores away the measured wheat, the designated barley, and his appointed spelt. So He trains him for judgement, his God teaches him. Isaiah 28:23-26.

These things look like metaphors, but they are real correspondences, which serve to describe the reformation and regeneration of a member of the Church; and this is why it goes on to say, 'So He trains him for judgement, his God teaches him'. 'Training him for judgement' means endowing him with intelligence, for 'judgement' means an intelligent understanding of truth, 2235, and 'teaching him', when done by God, means endowing him with wisdom. From this it may be seen what 'ploughing', 'harrowing', 'scattering the black cummin', 'sowing the cummin', and 'storing away wheat, barley, and spelt' mean, namely this: 'Ploughing' means implanting truth in good; 'harrowing' setting those things in order; 'black cummin' and 'cummin' factual knowledge, this being what a person acquires first, in order that he may receive intelligence; 'wheat' the good of love in the internal man, see 3941, 7605; 'barley' the good of love in the external man, 7602; and 'spelt' the truth which goes with that good, 7605.

[5] Correspondence, not the use of metaphor, gives 'ploughing' its meaning as the first phase of the Church in general and also in particular with each person who is being regenerated or becoming an embodiment of the Church, as is evident from the following words in Moses,

You shall not sow your vineyard with mixed seed. You shall not plough with an ox and an ass together. You shall not wear a garment made of wool and flax mixed together 2 . Deuteronomy 22:9-11.

These words imply that states of goodness and truth are not to be mixed up one with another. For 'vineyard' means the Church in respect of truth, whereas 'field' means the Church in respect of good. 'Ploughing with an ox' means making ready by means of good, 'ploughing with an ass' doing so by means of truth; and 'wool' too means good, whereas 'flax' means truth. The situation is this: Those in the Lord's celestial kingdom live in a state of good, whereas those in His spiritual kingdom live in a state of truth; those who live in one state cannot do so in the other. Can anyone fail to see that those words serve to mean a higher level of things? If they did not do so what harm would there be in sowing a vineyard with mixed seed, ploughing with an ox and ass together, or wearing a garment made of wool and flax mixed together?

V:

1. literally, the face of it

2. literally, a garment mixed, with wool and flax together

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