The Bible

 

Jeremiah 51

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1 Thus saith Jehovah: Behold, I will raise up against Babylon, and against them that dwell in the heart of those that rise against me, a destroying wind;

2 and I will send unto Babylon strangers, who shall fan her, and shall empty her land: for in the day of trouble they shall be against her round about.

3 Against him that bendeth let the archer bend his bow, and against him that lifteth himself up in his coat of mail; and spare not her young men: destroy utterly all her host.

4 And the slain shall fall in the land of the Chaldeans, and they that are thrust through in her streets.

5 For Israel is not forsaken, nor Judah of his God, of Jehovah of hosts; for their land is full of guilt against the Holy One of Israel.

6 Flee out of the midst of Babylon, and save every man his life; be ye not cut off in her iniquity: for this is the time of Jehovah's vengeance: he shall render unto her a recompence.

7 Babylon hath been a golden cup in Jehovah's hand, that made all the earth drunken: the nations have drunk of her wine; therefore have the nations become mad.

8 Babylon is suddenly fallen and ruined. Howl over her; take balm for her pain, if so be she may be healed.

9 We have treated Babylon, but she is not healed: forsake her, and let us go every one into his own country; for her judgment reacheth unto the heavens, and is lifted up to the skies.

10 Jehovah hath brought forth our righteousness: come, and let us declare in Zion the work of Jehovah our God.

11 Sharpen the arrows; take the shields. Jehovah hath stirred up the spirit of the kings of the Medes; for his purpose is against Babylon, to destroy it; for this is the vengeance of Jehovah, the vengeance of his temple.

12 Lift up a banner towards the walls of Babylon, make the watch strong, set the watchmen, prepare the ambushes; for Jehovah hath both devised and done that which he spoke against the inhabitants of Babylon.

13 Thou that dwellest upon many waters, abundant in treasures, thine end is come, the measure of thy rapacity.

14 Jehovah of hosts hath sworn by himself, I will assuredly fill thee with men, as with caterpillars; and they shall raise a shout against thee.

15 He hath made the earth by his power, he hath established the world by his wisdom, and hath stretched out the heavens by his understanding.

16 When he uttereth his voice, there is a tumult of waters in the heavens, and he causeth the vapours to ascend from the end of the earth; he maketh lightnings for the rain, and bringeth forth the wind out of his treasures.

17 Every man is become brutish, so as to have no knowledge; every founder is put to shame by the graven image, for his molten image is falsehood, and there is no breath in them.

18 They are vanity, a work of delusion: in the time of their visitation they shall perish.

19 The portion of Jacob is not like them; for it is he that hath formed all things: and [Israel] is the rod of his inheritance: Jehovah of hosts is his name.

20 Thou art my maul, [my] weapons of war: and with thee I will break in pieces the nations, and I will with thee destroy kingdoms;

21 and with thee I will break in pieces the horse and his rider; and with thee I will break in pieces the chariot and its driver;

22 and with thee will I break in pieces man and woman; and with thee will I break in pieces old and young; and with thee will I break in pieces the young man and the maid;

23 and with thee will I break in pieces the shepherd and his flock; and with thee will I break in pieces the husbandman and his yoke of oxen; and with thee will I break in pieces governors and rulers.

24 And I will render unto Babylon and to all the inhabitants of Chaldea, in your sight, all their evil which they have done in Zion, saith Jehovah.

25 Behold, I am against thee, mount of destruction, saith Jehovah, which destroyest all the earth; and I will stretch out my hand upon thee, and roll thee down from the rocks, and will make thee a burning mountain.

26 And they shall not take of thee a stone for a corner, nor a stone for foundations; for thou shalt be desolate for ever, saith Jehovah.

27 Lift up a banner in the land, blow the trumpet among the nations, prepare nations against her; call together against her the kingdoms of Ararat, Minni, and Ashkenaz; appoint a captain against her; cause the horses to come up as the bristly caterpillars.

28 Prepare nations against her, the kings of the Medes, their governors and all their rulers, yea, all the land of their dominion.

29 And the land trembleth and is in pain; for the purposes of Jehovah against Babylon do stand, to make the land of Babylon a desolation, without inhabitant.

30 The mighty men of Babylon have ceased to fight, they are sitting in the fortresses; their might hath failed, they are become as women: they have set her dwelling places on fire; her bars are broken.

31 Courier runneth to meet courier, and messenger to meet messenger, to announce to the king of Babylon that his city is taken from end to end;

32 and the passages are seized, and the reedy places are burnt with fire, and the men of war are affrighted.

33 For thus saith Jehovah of hosts, the God of Israel: The daughter of Babylon is like a threshing-floor, at the time of its being trodden; yet a little while, and the time of harvest shall come for her.

34 Nebuchadrezzar the king of Babylon hath devoured me, he hath crushed me, he hath made me an empty vessel; he hath swallowed me up like a dragon, he hath filled his belly with my delicates, he hath cast me out.

35 The violence done to me and to my flesh be upon Babylon, shall the inhabitress of Zion say; and, My blood be upon the inhabitants of Chaldea, shall Jerusalem say.

36 Therefore thus saith Jehovah: Behold, I will plead thy cause, and take vengeance for thee; and I will dry up her sea, and make her spring dry.

37 And Babylon shall become heaps, a dwelling-place of jackals, an astonishment, and a hissing, without inhabitant.

38 They shall roar together like young lions, growl as lions' whelps.

39 When they are heated, I will prepare their drink, and I will make them drunken, that they may exult, and sleep a perpetual sleep, and not wake, saith Jehovah.

40 I will bring them down like lambs to the slaughter, like rams with he-goats.

41 How is Sheshach taken! and how is the praise of the whole earth seized! How is Babylon become an astonishment among the nations!

42 The sea is come up upon Babylon: she is covered with the multitude of its waves.

43 Her cities are become a desolation, a dry land, and a desert, a land wherein no one dwelleth, neither doth a son of man pass thereby.

44 And I will punish Bel in Babylon, and I will bring forth out of his mouth what he hath swallowed up; and the nations shall not flow together any more unto him: yea, the wall of Babylon is fallen.

45 Go ye out of the midst of her, my people, and deliver every man his soul from the fierce anger of Jehovah!

46 lest your heart faint, and ye fear for the rumour that shall be heard in the land; for a rumour shall come [one] year, and after that a rumour in [another] year, and violence in the earth, ruler against ruler.

47 Therefore behold, days are coming when I will punish the graven images of Babylon; and her whole land shall be put to shame, and all her slain shall fall in the midst of her.

48 And the heavens and the earth, and all that is therein, shall shout aloud over Babylon; for out of the north the spoilers shall come against her, saith Jehovah.

49 As Babylon caused the slain of Israel to fall, so at Babylon shall fall the slain of all the earth.

50 Ye that have escaped the sword, go, stand not still: remember Jehovah from afar, and let Jerusalem come into your mind.

51 -- We are put to shame, for we have heard reproach; confusion hath covered our face: for strangers are come into the sanctuaries of Jehovah's house.

52 -- Therefore behold, days come, saith Jehovah, that I will punish her graven images; and throughout her land the wounded shall groan.

53 Though Babylon should mount up to the heavens, and though she should fortify the height of her strength, yet from me shall spoilers come unto her, saith Jehovah.

54 The sound of a cry [cometh] from Babylon, and great destruction from the land of the Chaldeans;

55 for Jehovah spoileth Babylon, and he will destroy out of her the great voice; and their waves roar like great waters, the noise of their voice resoundeth.

56 For the spoiler is come against her, against Babylon, and her mighty men are taken; their bows are broken in pieces; for Jehovah, the ùGod of recompences, will certainly requite.

57 And I will make drunk her princes, and her wise men, her governors, and her rulers, and her mighty men; and they shall sleep a perpetual sleep, and not wake, saith the King, whose name is Jehovah of hosts.

58 Thus saith Jehovah of hosts: The broad walls of Babylon shall be utterly laid bare, and her high gates shall be burned with fire; so that the peoples will have laboured in vain, and the nations for the fire: and they shall be weary.

59 The word that Jeremiah the prophet commanded Seraiah the son of Nerijah, the son of Mahseiah, when he went with Zedekiah the king of Judah to Babylon in the fourth year of his reign. Now Seraiah was chief chamberlain.

60 And Jeremiah wrote in a book all the evil that should come upon Babylon, all these words that are written against Babylon.

61 And Jeremiah said to Seraiah, When thou comest to Babylon, see that thou read all these words;

62 and say, Jehovah, thou hast spoken concerning this place, that thou wilt cut it off, so that none shall dwell in it, neither man nor beast, but that it shall be desolate for ever.

63 And it shall be, when thou hast ended reading this book, [that] thou shalt bind a stone to it, and cast it into the midst of the Euphrates;

64 and shalt say, Thus shall Babylon sink, and shall not rise, because of the evil that I will bring upon it: and they shall be weary. Thus far the words of Jeremiah.

   

From Swedenborg's Works

 

Arcana Coelestia #8813

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8813. 'That there were voices and lightnings' means a Divine state in which revelation took place. This is clear from the meaning of 'voices', which are the sounds made by claps of thunder, as God's truths; and from the meaning of 'lightnings' as the radiance and brilliance which those truths possess, for God's truths are made brilliant and radiant by the fiery brightness of light that shines from the sun of heaven. This is why 'voices and lightnings' means a Divine state in which revelation takes place, a Divine state being meant by the fact that they come down out of the sky, and revelation by the fact that 'voices' and 'lightnings' mean God's truths. For the meaning of 'voices', which are the products of lightning from the sky, as God's truths, see 7573; and the fact that 'lightnings' means brilliant flashes from them which strike a person's inward eye, enlightening those guided by truth derived from good and bewildering those steeped in falsity arising from evil, is clear from places in the Word where 'lightnings' are mentioned, as in David,

The clouds dropped water, the skies gave voice; and Your arrows went out The voice of Your thunder went into the world, 1 the lightnings lit up the earth, the earth was shaken violently and quaked. Psalms 77:17-18.

Here 'the voice of thunder' stands for God's truth, 7573, 'lightnings' for its brilliance, and 'the earth' for the Church. Consequently ' the lightnings lit up the earth' stands for the enlightenment of the Church by God's truth.

[2] Something similar occurs in the same author,

His lightnings will enlighten the earth, the earth will see and fear; the mountains will melt like wax before Jehovah. Psalms 97:4-5.

In the same author,

What Jehovah wills He does in heaven and on earth, in the seas and in all deep places. He causes the vapours to go up from the ends of the earth, He makes lightnings for the rain. Psalms 135:6-7; Jeremiah 10:13; 51:16.

'Lightnings for the rain' stands for the brightness of the truth coming down from heaven. In John,

There were lightnings, voices, and thunders. Revelation 11:19; 16:18.

'Voices, lightnings, and thunders' stands for God's truths which enlighten the good and terrify the evil.

[3] In Ezekiel,

The appearance of the living creatures (who were cherubs) was like burning coals of fire, Like the appearance of lamps. It was moving between the living creatures, so that there was the brightness of fire, and out of the fire went forth lightning. And the living creatures ran forth and back, in appearance like a flash of lightning. Ezekiel 1:13-14.

Here 'fire' stands for the good of love, and 'out of the fire went forth lightning' for God's truth derived from that good. The Lord's Divine providence, which is God's truth emanating from the Lord's Divine Good, is described here by 'the cherubs'.

[4] In Daniel, behold, one clothed in linen whose loins were girded with gold of Uphaz, and his body was like tarshish; 2 his face was like the appearance of lightning, and his eyes were like fiery torches. Daniel 10:5-6.

'A face like the appearance of lightning' stands for the love of truth; for truth radiated by love carries with it a characteristic, meant by 'lightning', which is like a flame flashing from fire.

[5] In Zechariah,

Jehovah will appear over them, and His arrow will go forth like lightning; and the Lord Jehovih will sound a blast on the trumpet, and move forward in storms of the south. Zechariah 9:14.

'The arrow which will go forth like lightning' stands for God's truth which strikes and penetrates, 'an arrow' being truth coming from doctrine, see 2686, 2709, so that 'an arrow from Jehovah' is truth coming from God.

[6] In Nahum,

The glitter of the sword, the lightning-flash of the spear, 3 and the multitude of the slain. Nahum 3:3

In Moses,

I will sharpen My flashing sword 4 . Deuteronomy 32:41.

This stands for the penetration of God's truth as experienced by the evil, 'sword' standing for truth engaged in conflict, 2799, 8294, and 'lightning' for its brightness which strikes the understanding and deprives it of the ability to see truth. Something similar occurs in Ezekiel 21:15, 28. From all this it is also evident that 'lightning' is used to mean God's truth in Matthew 28:3, and Luke 17:24.

Footnotes:

1. The Hebrew, word here means a wheel or a whirlwind.

2. A Hebrew word for a particular kind of stone, possibly a beryl.

3. literally, The brightness of the sword, the lightning of the spear

4. literally, the lightning of My sword

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