The Bible

 

Jeremiah 45

Study

   

1 The words which Jeremiah the prophet said to Baruch, the son of Neriah, when he put these words down in a book from the mouth of Jeremiah, in the fourth year of Jehoiakim, the son of Josiah, king of Judah; he said,

2 This is what the Lord, the God of Israel, has said of you, O Baruch:

3 You said, Sorrow is mine! for the Lord has given me Sorrow in addition to my pain; I am tired with the sound of my Sorrow, and I get no rest.

4 This is what you are to say to him: The Lord has said, Truly, the building which I put up will be broken down, and that which was planted by me will be uprooted, and this through all the land;

5 And as for you, are you looking for great things for yourself? Have no desire for them: for truly I will send evil on all flesh, says the Lord: but your life I will keep safe from attack wherever you go.

   

Commentary

 

Weary

  

On the surface, it appears that Swedenborg gives two different representations for “weariness.” In discussing Genesis - where Esau and later Jacob are described as “weary” - he says it represents a state of temptation, an interior spiritual conflict. In discussing passages from several other places, however, he says “weariness” represents a lack of truth, having no concept of how to be good. But these two ideas are not as disconnected as they seem. Temptation arises when the interior, rational parts of our minds - which can be elevated to grasp deeper truths about life and the Lord - come into conflict with the exterior, natural parts of our minds, where we are driven by bodily desires and cling to false ideas that support those desires. Part of the process is clearing those falsities out of the lower parts of our minds so that the deeper truths can enter in. In that in-between stage, when the falsities are being driven away but we have not embraced the deeper truth yet, we can feel pretty empty. people who have been through serious temptations will likely relate to this - at some point along the way you feel like you have no idea what is right and what is wrong. If at those moments we can give up trying to figure it out and trust in the Lord, we'll be OK - but we will likely be pretty tired, too.