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Jeremiah 49

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1 Of the children of Ammon. Thus saith Jehovah: Hath Israel no sons? hath he no heir? why then doth Malcam possess Gad, and his people well in the cities thereof?

2 Therefore, behold, the days come, saith Jehovah, that I will cause an alarm of war to be heard against Rabbah of the children of Ammon; and it shall become a desolate heap, and her daughters shall be burned with fire: then shall Israel possess them that did possess him, saith Jehovah.

3 Wail, O Heshbon, for Ai is laid waste; cry, ye daughters of Rabbah, gird you with sackcloth: lament, and run to and fro among the fences; for Malcam shall go into captivity, his priests and his princes together.

4 Wherefore gloriest thou in the valleys, thy flowing valley, O backsliding daughter? that trusted in her treasures, [saying], Who shall come unto me?

5 Behold, I will bring a fear upon thee, saith the Lord, Jehovah of hosts, from all that are round about thee; and ye shall be driven out every man right forth, and there shall be none to gather together the fugitives.

6 But afterward I will bring back the captivity of the children of Ammon, saith Jehovah.

7 Of Edom. Thus saith Jehovah of hosts: Is wisdom no more in Teman? is counsel perished from the prudent? is their wisdom vanished?

8 Flee ye, turn back, dwell in the depths, O inhabitants of Dedan; for I will bring the calamity of Esau upon him, the time that I shall visit him.

9 If grape-gatherers came to thee, would they not leave some gleaning grapes? if thieves by night, would they not destroy till they had enough?

10 But I have made Esau bare, I have uncovered his secret places, and he shall not be able to hide himself: his seed is destroyed, and his brethren, and his neighbors; and he is not.

11 Leave thy fatherless children, I will preserve them alive; and let thy widows trust in me.

12 For thus saith Jehovah: Behold, they to whom it pertained not to drink of the cup shall assuredly drink; and art thou he that shall altogether go unpunished? thou shalt not go unpunished, but thou shalt surely drink.

13 For I have sworn by myself, saith Jehovah, that Bozrah shall become an astonishment, a reproach, a waste, and a curse; and all the cities thereof shall be perpetual wastes.

14 I have heard tidings from Jehovah, and an ambassador is sent among the nations, [saying], Gather yourselves together, and come against her, and rise up to the battle.

15 For, behold, I have made thee small among the nations, and despised among men.

16 As for thy terribleness, the pride of thy heart hath deceived thee, O thou that dwellest in the clefts of the rock, that holdest the height of the hill: though thou shouldest make thy nest as high as the eagle, I will bring thee down from thence, saith Jehovah.

17 And Edom shall become an astonishment: every one that passeth by it shall be astonished, and shall hiss at all the plagues thereof.

18 As in the overthrow of Sodom and Gomorrah and the neighbor cities thereof, saith Jehovah, no man shall dwell there, neither shall any son of man sojourn therein.

19 Behold, he shall come up like a lion from the pride of the Jordan against the strong habitation: for I will suddenly make them run away from it; and whoso is chosen, him will I appoint over it: for who is like me? and who will appoint me a time? and who is the shepherd that will stand before me?

20 Therefore hear ye the counsel of Jehovah, that he hath taken against Edom; and his purposes, that he hath purposed against the inhabitants of Teman: Surely they shall drag them away, [even] the little ones of the flock; surely he shall make their habitation desolate over them.

21 The earth trembleth at the noise of their fall; there is a cry, the noise whereof is heard in the Red Sea.

22 Behold, he shall come up and fly as the eagle, and spread out his wings against Bozrah: and the heart of the mighty men of Edom at that day shall be as the heart of a woman in her pangs.

23 Of Damascus. Hamath is confounded, and Arpad; for they have heard evil tidings, they are melted away: there is sorrow on the sea; it cannot be quiet.

24 Damascus is waxed feeble, she turneth herself to flee, and trembling hath seized on her: anguish and sorrows have taken hold of her, as of a woman in travail.

25 How is the city of praise not forsaken, the city of my joy?

26 Therefore her young men shall fall in her streets, and all the men of war shall be brought to silence in that day, saith Jehovah of hosts.

27 And I will kindle a fire in the wall of Damascus, and it shall devour the palaces of Ben-hadad.

28 Of Kedar, and of the kingdoms of Hazor, which Nebuchadrezzar king of Babylon smote. Thus saith Jehovah: Arise ye, go up to Kedar, and destroy the children of the east.

29 Their tents and their flocks shall they take; they shall carry away for themselves their curtains, and all their vessels, and their camels; and they shall cry unto them, Terror on every side!

30 Flee ye, wander far off, dwell in the depths, O ye inhabitants of Hazor, saith Jehovah; for Nebuchadrezzar king of Babylon hath taken counsel against you, and hath conceived a purpose against you.

31 Arise, get you up unto a nation that is at ease, that dwelleth without care, saith Jehovah; that have neither gates nor bars, that dwell alone.

32 And their camels shall be a booty, and the multitude of their cattle a spoil: and I will scatter unto all winds them that have the corners [of their hair] cut off; and I will bring their calamity from every side of them, saith Jehovah.

33 And Hazor shall be a dwelling-place of jackals, a desolation for ever: no man shall dwell there, neither shall any son of man sojourn therein.

34 The word of Jehovah that came to Jeremiah the prophet concerning Elam, in the beginning of the reign of Zedekiah king of Judah, saying,

35 Thus saith Jehovah of hosts: Behold, I will break the bow of Elam, the chief of their might.

36 And upon Elam will I bring the four winds from the four quarters of heaven, and will scatter them toward all those winds; and there shall be no nation whither the outcasts of Elam shall not come.

37 And I will cause Elam to be dismayed before their enemies, and before them that seek their life; and I will bring evil upon them, even my fierce anger, saith Jehovah; and I will send the sword after them, till I have consumed them;

38 and I will set my throne in Elam, and will destroy from thence king and princes, saith Jehovah.

39 But it shall come to pass in the latter days, that I will bring back the captivity of Elam, saith Jehovah.

   

From Swedenborg's Works

 

Arcana Coelestia #2025

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2025. That 'I will give to you, and to your seed after you, the land of your sojournings' means that the Lord acquired to Himself by His own powers all things meant by 'the land of sojournings' is clear from the meaning of 'sojourning' as receiving instruction, dealt with in 1463. And because man acquires life to himself chiefly through instruction in facts, matters of doctrine, and cognitions of faith, sojourning is consequently the life so acquired. When applied to the Lord it is the life which He obtained for Himself through cognitions, through the conflicts that constituted temptations, and through victories in temptations; and because He obtained it by His own powers, this is what 'the land of your sojournings' means here.

[2] That the Lord obtained all things for Himself by His own powers, and by His own powers united the Human Essence to the Divine Essence and Divine Essence to Human Essence, and that He alone in this way became righteousness, is quite clear in the Prophets, as in Isaiah,

Who is this coming from Edom, marching in the vast numbers of His strength? I have trodden the winepress alone, and from the peoples no one was with Me. I looked around and there was no one helping; and I was astonished that there was no one upholding; therefore My own arm brought Me salvation. Isaiah 63:1, 3, 5.

'Edom' stands for the Lord's Human Essence, 'strength' and 'arm' for power. Plain statements to the effect that He acted from His own power are contained in the phrases 'no one helping' and 'no one upholding', and in that about His own arm bringing Him salvation.

[3] In the same prophet,

He saw that there was no one, and wondered that there was nobody to intercede; and His own arm brought salvation to Him, and His righteousness upheld Him. And He put on righteousness as a breastplate, and a helmet of salvation on His head. Isaiah 59:16-17.

This similarly means that He acted by His own power, and in so doing became righteousness. That the Lord is righteousness is stated in Daniel,

Seventy weeks have been decreed to atone for iniquity, and to bring in everlasting righteousness, and to seal up vision and prophet, and to anoint the Most Holy Place. Daniel 9:24.

And in Jeremiah,

I will raise up for David a righteous branch, and He will reign as king and act with understanding, and He will execute judgement and righteousness in the land. In His days Judah will be saved, and Israel will dwell in confidence. And this is His name which they will call Him, Jehovah our Righteousness. Jeremiah 23:5-6; 33:15-16.

For this reason He is also called 'the Habitation of Righteousness' in Jeremiah 31:23; 50:7, and 'wonderful' and 'Hero' in Isaiah 9:6.

[4] The reason why the Lord so many times attributes to the Father that which is His own has been explained above in 1999, 2004; for Jehovah was within Him, and so within every single part of Him. Something similar in man may be used for illustration, although there can be no comparison. Within man is his soul, and because it is within him, the soul is within every individual part of him, that is to say, within every individual part of his thinking and every individual part of his activity. Anything that does not have his soul within it is not part of him. The Lord's soul was Life itself or Being (Esse) itself, which is Jehovah, for He was conceived from Jehovah; thus Life itself was present within every individual part of Him. And because Life itself, or Being (Esse) itself, which is Jehovah, belonged to Him in the way that the soul does to man, so that which was Jehovah's was His, which is what the Lord says in His statements about His being in the bosom of the Father, John 1:18, and about all things that the Father has being His, John 16:15; 17:10-11.

[5] From good which is Jehovah's He united the Divine Essence to the Human Essence, and from truth united the Human Essence to the Divine Essence, and so achieved every single thing all from Himself. Indeed His Human was left to Itself in order that of Himself He might fight against all the hells and overcome them; and because He had life within Himself, as stated, which was His own, He overcame them by His own power and strength, as is also clearly stated in the places quoted from the Prophets. So then, because He acquired all things to Himself by His own powers, He became Righteousness, cleared the world of spirits of hellish genii and spirits, and in so doing rescued the human race from destruction - for the human race is governed by means of spirits - and thus redeemed it. This is why the Old Testament Word speaks so often of Him as Rescuer and Redeemer, and also Saviour, as His name Jesus describes.

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

From Swedenborg's Works

 

Arcana Coelestia #6945

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6945. 'For they will say, Jehovah has not appeared to you' means the Divine within the Lord's Human. This is clear from the meaning of saying' as perception, dealt with often, in this instance the perception of those who belong to the spiritual Church; and from the meaning of 'Jehovah has appeared' as the appearance of the Lord's Divine within His Human. The fact that this kind of appearance is meant by a visual appearance is self-evident; and the fact that 'Jehovah' is the Lord in respect of the Divine itself and in respect of the Divine Human is dealt with in 1736, 2004, 2005, 2018, 2025, 2156, 2329, 2921, 3023, 3035, 5041, 5663, 6281, 6303, 6905. That 'Jehovah has appeared' means the appearance of the Lord's Divine within His Human is also evident from the consideration that His Divine cannot appear to anyone, not even to an angel, except through the Divine Human; nor can the Divine Human except through Divine Truth which goes forth from Him. The subject here in the internal sense is the deliverance of those who belonged to the spiritual Church. Their deliverance was effected by means of the Lord's Coming into the world, see 2661, 2716, 3969, 6854, 6914; and these specifically were saved by means of the Lord's Divine Human, 2716, 2833, 2834.

[2] The implications of this - that those who belong to that Church will not be in possession of faith and so will be unreceptive of what the law from God, represented by 'Moses', says, that is, what the Word says, unless they see signs are as follows: Because they belong to the spiritual Church they do not have a perception of truth from good as people who are celestial do. Instead they acknowledge as the truth all the religious teaching of their Church which they have substantiated for themselves, which means that compared with those who are celestial they dwell in obscurity, 1718, 2831, 2849, 2935, 2937, 3833, 6427, 6500, 6865. This is also made perfectly clear by the fact that they do not at all comprehend how the Lord's Human is able to be Divine, or that God's love within the Human makes it so. For they fix their thought on what is human as they know of it in people generally and do not diverge from this when they think of the Lord; so their minds are in a tangle. The same thing is again made clear by the fact that they also fail to comprehend how a person can be living after death and in that life can have the senses, such as sight, hearing, touch, and smell, or can exist there in a human form. The idea that a person is like this when he lays aside his body along with its senses and members appears to them to be very far from the truth. Thus they are enmeshed in impressions received by the senses and in factual knowledge and illusions that are products of those impressions. If they did not believe therefore that the body is to be rejoined to the soul they would have no belief in any resurrection at all.

[3] From all this one may recognize quite clearly how much obscurity they dwell in regarding the things of heaven. It explains why they cannot have any faith implanted in them at all unless the Lord withholds them from falsities by great force. And since such a force did not exist before the Lord's Coming, only after His Coming when He had made the Human within Himself Divine, they could not be rescued from the lower earth where they were being molested by falsities and be raised to heaven until after the Lord's resurrection, 6914. This then is the reason why it is said that they will not believe and so will be unreceptive of what the law of God, that is, what God's truth, says unless they see proof that it is the truth, which is to say, unless they see signs, described in what follows immediately below.

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