The Bible

 

Ezekiel 27

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1 The word of the Lord came to me again, saying,

2 And you, son of man, make a song of grief for Tyre;

3 And say to Tyre, O you who are seated at the doorway of the sea, trading for the peoples with the great sea-lands, these are the words of the Lord: You, O Tyre, have said, I am a ship completely beautiful.

4 Your builders have made your outlines in the heart of the seas, they have made you completely beautiful.

5 They have made all your boards of fir-trees from Senir: they have taken cedars from Lebanon to make the supports for your sails.

6 Of oak-trees from Bashan they have made your driving blades; they have made your floors of ivory and boxwood from the sea-lands of Kittim.

7 The best linen with needlework from Egypt was your sail, stretched out to be a flag for you; blue and purple from the sea-lands of Elishah gave you shade.

8 The people of Zidon and Arvad were your boatmen; the wise men of Zemer were in you; they were guiding your ships;

9 The responsible men of Gebal and its wise men were in you, making your boards watertight: all the ships of the sea with their seamen were in you trading in your goods.

10 Cush and Lud and Put were in your army, your men of war, hanging up their body-covers and head-dresses of war in you: they gave you your glory.

11 The men of Arvad in your army were on your walls, and were watchmen in your towers, hanging up their arms on your walls round about; they made you completely beautiful.

12 Tarshish did business with you because of the great amount of your wealth; they gave silver, iron, tin, and lead for your goods.

13 Javan, Tubal, and Meshech were your traders; they gave living men and brass vessels for your goods.

14 The people of Togarmah gave horses and war-horses and transport beasts for your goods.

15 The men of Rodan were your traders: a great number of sea-lands did business with you: they gave you horns of ivory and ebony as an offering.

16 Edom did business with you because of the great number of things which you made; they gave emeralds, purple, and needlework, and the best linen and coral and rubies for your goods.

17 Judah and the land of Israel were your traders; they gave grain of Minnith and sweet cakes and honey and oil and perfume for your goods.

18 Damascus did business with you because of the great amount of your wealth, with wine of Helbon and white wool.

19 ... for your goods: they gave polished iron and spices for your goods.

20 Dedan did trade with you in cloths for the backs of horses.

21 Arabia and all the rulers of Kedar did business with you; in lambs and sheep and goats, in these they did business with you.

22 The traders of Sheba and Raamah did trade with you; they gave the best of all sorts of spices and all sorts of stones of great price and gold for your goods.

23 Haran and Canneh and Eden, the traders of Asshur and all the Medes:

24 These were your traders in beautiful robes, in rolls of blue and needlework, and in chests of coloured cloth, corded with cords and made of cedar-wood, in them they did trade with you.

25 Tarshish ships did business for you in your goods: and you were made full, and great was your glory in the heart of the seas.

26 Your boatmen have taken you into great waters: you have been broken by the east wind in the heart of the seas.

27 Your wealth and your goods, the things in which you do trade, your seamen and those guiding your ships, those who make your boards watertight, and those who do business with your goods, and all your men of war who are in you, with all who have come together in you, will go down into the heart of the seas in the day of your downfall.

28 At the sound of the cry of your ships' guides, the boards of the ship will be shaking.

29 And all the boatmen, the seamen and those who are expert at guiding a ship through the sea, will come down from their ships and take their places on the land;

30 And their voices will be sounding over you, and crying bitterly they will put dust on their heads, rolling themselves in the dust:

31 And they will have the hair of their heads cut off because of you, and will put haircloth on their bodies, weeping for you with bitter grief in their souls, even with bitter sorrow.

32 And in their weeping they will make a song of grief for you, sorrowing over you and saying, Who is like Tyre, who has come to an end in the deep sea?

33 When your goods went out over the seas, you made numbers of peoples full; the wealth of the kings of the earth was increased with your great wealth and all your goods.

34 Now that you are broken by the seas in the deep waters, your goods and all your people will go down with you.

35 All the people of the sea-lands are overcome with wonder at you, and their kings are full of fear, their faces are troubled.

36 Those who do business among the peoples make sounds of surprise at you; you have become a thing of fear, you have come to an end for ever.

   

From Swedenborg's Works

 

Apocalypse Revealed #493

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493. These are the two olive trees and the two lampstands standing before the God of the earth. (11:4) This symbolizes love and intelligence, or charity and faith, both of which people have in them from the Lord.

An olive tree symbolizes love and charity, as explained below. And a lampstand symbolizes enlightenment in truths (no. 43), thus intelligence and faith, inasmuch as intelligence comes from an enlightenment in truths, and faith in turn from this. To stand before God means, symbolically, to hear and do what He has commanded (no. 366). Here, therefore, it means that these two characteristics in them come from the Lord who is God of the earth, that is, in people who possess the two essential elements of the New Church, as described above. It is apparent from this that the statement that the two witnesses were the two olive trees and two lampstands means, symbolically, that they were love and intelligence, or charity and faith. For these two form the church - love and charity forming its life, and intelligence and faith its doctrine.

[2] An olive tree symbolizes love and charity because the olive tree symbolizes the celestial church, and thus an olive, being its fruit, symbolizes celestial love, which is love toward the Lord. Because of this, that love is symbolized also by olive oil, with which all the holy accouterments of the church were anointed. The oil called holy oil 1 was extracted from olives and mixed with spices (Exodus 30:23-24). Olive oil was also used to light the lamps of the lampstand in the Tabernacle every evening (Exodus 27:20, Leviticus 24:2).

The olive tree and olives have similar symbolic meanings in Zechariah:

Two olive trees were by (the lampstand), one at the right of the bowl, the other at its left..., (and) two olive berries... These are the two offspring of the olive tree, which stand before the Lord of the whole earth. (Zechariah 4:3, 11-12, 14)

In the book of Psalms:

I am like a green olive tree in the house of God. (Psalms 52:8)

And in Jeremiah:

Jehovah called your name, Green Olive Tree, lovely, of beautiful fruit. (Jeremiah 11:16-17)

And so on elsewhere.

[3] Since Jerusalem symbolized the church, therefore many things in it and about it also symbolized such things as are connected with the church. Near it, too, was the Mount of Olives, and it symbolized Divine love, which is why Jesus "was during the days in the temple teaching, and at night He went out and spent the night on the Mount of Olives?" (Luke 21:37, cf. 22:39, John 8:1). It is also why Jesus spoke with His disciples on that mountain regarding the end of the age and His coming then (Matthew 24:3ff., Mark 13:3ff.). It was also from that mountain that He went to Jerusalem and suffered the cross (Matthew 21:1; 26:30, Mark 11:1; 14:26, Luke 19:29, 37). Moreover, this accorded with the prediction in Zechariah:

In that day His feet will stand on the Mount of Olives, which faces Jerusalem on the east. (Zechariah 14:4)

Because the olive tree symbolized the celestial component of the church, therefore the cherubim inside the Temple at Jerusalem were made of olive wood, and so, too, were the doors to the inner sanctuary, and the doorposts (1 Kings 6:23-33).

Footnotes:

  
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Many thanks to the General Church of the New Jerusalem, and to Rev. N.B. Rogers, translator, for the permission to use this translation.