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

 

Under

  

In the Bible, things that are lower down, or under, physically, generally represent things that are lower or more external spiritually. In some cases, the lower things have been separated and put away to protect the good, but in others, it can mean that a less exalted idea or good desire is supporting a more exalted one.

(References: Arcana Coelestia 4564 [1-2], 8610, 9656)

From Swedenborg's Works

 

Arcana Coelestia #8610

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8610. 'And put it under him, and he sat on it' means correspondence with the highest level of truth. This becomes clear from the consideration that the stone supported Moses and 'Moses' represents the highest level of truth, which is God's truth that goes forth directly from the Lord. When the lowest level of truth corresponds with this highest level of truth it supports it, for they act as one. Interior truths are joined to exterior, and finally to the lowest through the correspondence [of each level with the one above it]. Highest truth then has might within the lowest, because it resides in it and acts through it. But if there is no such correspondence they are disjoined, and consequently highest truth has no might within lowest. What correspondence is may be seen from the extensive presentation, at the ends of a number of chapters, of the correspondence of all aspects of the human being with the Grand Man.

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