The Bible

 

Jeremiah 50

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1 The word that Jehovah spake concerning Babylon, concerning the land of the Chaldeans, by Jeremiah the prophet.

2 Declare ye among the nations and publish, and set up a standard; publish, and conceal not: say, Babylon is taken, Bel is put to shame, Merodach is dismayed; her images are put to shame, her idols are dismayed.

3 For out of the north there cometh up a nation against her, which shall make her land desolate, and none shall dwell therein: they are fled, they are gone, both man and beast.

4 In those days, and in that time, saith Jehovah, the children of Israel shall come, they and the children of Judah together; they shall go on their way weeping, and shall seek Jehovah their God.

5 They shall inquire concerning Zion with their faces thitherward, [saying], Come ye, and join yourselves to Jehovah in an everlasting covenant that shall not be forgotten.

6 My people have been lost sheep: their shepherds have caused them to go astray; they have turned them away on the mountains; they have gone from mountain to hill; they have forgotten their resting-place.

7 All that found them have devoured them; and their adversaries said, We are not guilty, because they have sinned against Jehovah, the habitation of righteousness, even Jehovah, the hope of their fathers.

8 Flee out of the midst of Babylon, and go forth out of the land of the Chaldeans, and be as the he-goats before the flocks.

9 For, lo, I will stir up and cause to come up against Babylon a company of great nations from the north country; and they shall set themselves in array against her; from thence she shall be taken: their arrows shall be as of an expert mighty man; none shall return in vain.

10 And Chaldea shall be a prey: all that prey upon her shall be satisfied, saith Jehovah.

11 Because ye are glad, because ye rejoice, O ye that plunder my heritage, because ye are wanton as a heifer that treadeth out [the grain], and neigh as strong horses;

12 your mother shall be utterly put to shame; she that bare you shall be confounded: behold, she shall be the hindermost of the nations, a wilderness, a dry land, and a desert.

13 Because of the wrath of Jehovah she shall not be inhabited, but she shall be wholly desolate: every one that goeth by Babylon shall be astonished, and hiss at all her plagues.

14 Set yourselves in array against Babylon round about, all ye that bend the bow; shoot at her, spare no arrows: for she hath sinned against Jehovah.

15 Shout against her round about: she hath submitted herself; her bulwarks are fallen, her walls are thrown down; for it is the vengeance of Jehovah: take vengeance upon her; as she hath done, do unto her.

16 Cut off the sower from Babylon, and him that handleth the sickle in the time of harvest: for fear of the oppressing sword they shall turn every one to his people, and they shall flee every one to his own land.

17 Israel is a hunted sheep; the lions have driven him away: first, the king of Assyria devoured him; and now at last Nebuchadrezzar king of Babylon hath broken his bones.

18 Therefore thus saith Jehovah of hosts, the God of Israel: Behold, I will punish the king of Babylon and his land, as I have punished the king of Assyria.

19 And I will bring Israel again to his pasture, and he shall feed on Carmel and Bashan, and his soul shall be satisfied upon the hills of Ephraim and in Gilead.

20 In those days, and in that time, saith Jehovah, the iniquity of Israel shall be sought for, and there shall be none; and the sins of Judah, and they shall not be found: for I will pardon them whom I leave as a remnant.

21 Go up against the land of Merathaim, even against it, and against the inhabitants of Pekod: slay and utterly destroy after them, saith Jehovah, and do according to all that I have commanded thee.

22 A sound of battle is in the land, and of great destruction.

23 How is the hammer of the whole earth cut asunder and broken! how is Babylon become a desolation among the nations!

24 I have laid a snare for thee, and thou art also taken, O Babylon, and thou wast not aware: thou art found, and also caught, because thou hast striven against Jehovah.

25 Jehovah hath opened his armory, and hath brought forth the weapons of his indignation; for the Lord, Jehovah of hosts, hath a work [to do] in the land of the Chaldeans.

26 Come against her from the utmost border; open her store-houses; cast her up as heaps, and destroy her utterly; let nothing of her be left.

27 Slay all her bullocks; let them go down to the slaughter: woe unto them! for their day is come, the time of their visitation.

28 The voice of them that flee and escape out of the land of Babylon, to declare in Zion the vengeance of Jehovah our God, the vengeance of his temple.

29 Call together the archers against Babylon, all them that bend the bow; encamp against her round about; let none thereof escape: recompense her according to her work; according to all that she hath done, do unto her; for she hath been proud against Jehovah, against the Holy One of Israel.

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

31 Behold, I am against thee, O thou proud one, saith the Lord, Jehovah of hosts; for thy day is come, the time that I will visit thee.

32 And the proud one shall stumble and fall, and none shall raise him up; and I will kindle a fire in his cities, and it shall devour all that are round about him.

33 Thus saith Jehovah of hosts: The children of Israel and the children of Judah are oppressed together; and all that took them captive hold them fast; they refuse to let them go.

34 Their Redeemer is strong; Jehovah of hosts is his name: he will thoroughly plead their cause, that he may give rest to the earth, and disquiet the inhabitants of Babylon.

35 A sword is upon the Chaldeans, saith Jehovah, and upon the inhabitants of Babylon, and upon her princes, and upon her wise men.

36 A sword is upon the boasters, and they shall become fools; a sword is upon her mighty men, and they shall be dismayed.

37 A sword is upon their horses, and upon their chariots, and upon all the mingled people that are in the midst of her; and they shall become as women: a sword is upon her treasures, and they shall be robbed.

38 A drought is upon her waters, and they shall be dried up; for it is a land of graven images, and they are mad over idols.

39 Therefore the wild beasts of the desert with the wolves shall dwell there, and the ostriches shall dwell therein: and it shall be no more inhabited for ever; neither shall it be dwelt in from generation to generation.

40 As when God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah and the neighbor cities thereof, saith Jehovah, so shall no man dwell there, neither shall any son of man sojourn therein.

41 Behold, a people cometh from the north; and a great nation and many kings shall be stirred up from the uttermost parts of the earth.

42 They lay hold on bow and spear; they are cruel, and have no mercy; their voice roareth like the sea; and they ride upon horses, every one set in array, as a man to the battle, against thee, O daughter of Babylon.

43 The king of Babylon hath heard the tidings of them, and his hands wax feeble: anguish hath taken hold of him, [and] pangs as of a woman in travail.

44 Behold, [the enemy] 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 can stand before me?

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

46 At the noise of the taking of Babylon the earth trembleth, and the cry is heard among the nations.

   

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.