The Bible

 

Lamentations 5

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1 Remember, O Jehovah, what is come upon us: Behold, and see our reproach.

2 Our inheritance is turned unto strangers, Our houses unto aliens.

3 We are orphans and fatherless; Our mothers are as widows.

4 We have drunken our water for money; Our wood is sold unto us.

5 Our pursuers are upon our necks: We are weary, and have no rest.

6 We have given the hand to the Egyptians, And to the Assyrians, to be satisfied with bread.

7 Our fathers sinned, and are not; And we have borne their iniquities.

8 Servants rule over us: There is none to deliver us out of their hand.

9 We get our bread at the peril of our lives, Because of the sword of the wilderness.

10 Our skin is black like an oven, Because of the burning heat of famine.

11 They ravished the women in Zion, The virgins in the cities of Judah.

12 Princes were hanged up by their hand: The faces of elders were not honored.

13 The young men bare the mill; And the children stumbled under the wood.

14 The elders have ceased from the gate, The young men from their music.

15 The joy of our heart is ceased; Our dance is turned into mourning.

16 The crown is fallen from our head: Woe unto us! for we have sinned.

17 For this our heart is faint; For these things our eyes are dim;

18 For the mountain of Zion, which is desolate: The foxes walk upon it.

19 Thou, O Jehovah, abidest for ever; Thy throne is from generation to generation.

20 Wherefore dost thou forget us for ever, [And] forsake us so long time?

21 Turn thou us unto thee, O Jehovah, and we shall be turned; Renew our days as of old.

22 But thou hast utterly rejected us; Thou art very wroth against us.

   

Commentary

 

Jerusalem

  

Jerusalem, on Mount Zion, signifies the doctrine of love to the Lord, and how it governs your life. Jerusalem first comes to our attention in 2 Samuel 5, when King David takes the city from the Jebusites and makes it his capital. In the next chapter he brings the Ark of the Covenant there, and later it is where Solomon builds the temple, and his own palace. From then on Jerusalem is the center of worship of the Israelitish church. It is the place where the Lord was presented in the temple as a baby, where He tarried to talk to the priests at age twelve, where He cleansed the temple, had the last supper, was crucified and then rose. It is a central place in both the old and new Testaments. The city was built on Mount Zion, the highest point of the mountains of Judea. A city, in the Word, represents doctrine, the organized knowledge of the truths of the church. Mountains represent love of the Lord and the consequent worship. If you put those things together, Jerusalem on Mount Zion signifies the doctrine of love to the Lord, and how it governs your life. This is why David was led to make Jerusalem the most important city of the land, and why all worship was conducted there. And this is also why Jeroboam was condemned for introducing idol worship in Samaria. In the Book of Revelation, John's vision of the city New Jerusalem descending from God is a prophecy of a new dispensation of doctrine coming from the Lord.

(References: Arcana Coelestia 4539, 8938; The Apocalypse Explained 365 [35-38])

The Bible

 

Jeremiah 23:14

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14 In the prophets of Jerusalem also I have seen a horrible thing: they commit adultery, and walk in lies; and they strengthen the hands of evil-doers, so that none doth return from his wickedness: they are all of them become unto me as Sodom, and the inhabitants thereof as Gomorrah.