The Bible

 

Lamentations 5

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1 Remember, O Jehovah, what is come upon us; consider, and see our reproach.

2 Our inheritance is turned to strangers, our houses to aliens.

3 We are orphans and fatherless, our mothers are as widows.

4 Our water have we to drink for money, our wood cometh unto us for a price.

5 Our pursuers are on our necks: we are weary, we have no rest.

6 We have given the hand to Egypt, [and] to Asshur, to be satisfied with bread.

7 Our fathers have sinned, [and] they are not; and we bear their iniquities.

8 Bondmen rule over us: there is no deliverer out of their hand.

9 We have to get our bread at the risk of our lives, because of the sword of the wilderness.

10 Our skin gloweth like an oven, because of the burning heat of the famine.

11 They have ravished the women in Zion, the maids in the cities of Judah.

12 Princes were hanged up by their hand; the faces of elders were not honoured.

13 The young men have borne the mill, and the youths have stumbled under the wood.

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

15 The joy of our heart hath 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 have grown dim,

18 Because of the mountain of Zion, which is desolate: foxes walk over it.

19 Thou, Jehovah, dwellest for ever; thy throne is from generation to generation.

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

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

22 Or is it that thou hast utterly rejected us? Wouldest thou be exceeding wroth against us?

   

From Swedenborg's Works

 

Apocalypse Revealed #189

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189. "'That no one may take your crown.'" This symbolically means, lest they lose the wisdom from which comes eternal happiness.

A person acquires wisdom from no other source than goodness gained through truths from the Lord. A person acquires wisdom through these truths because they are the means by which the Lord conjoins Himself with the person and the person with Himself, and the Lord is wisdom itself. Wisdom consequently perishes in a person when he stops putting truths into practice, that is, when he stops living in accordance with them. He also then ceases to love wisdom, and accordingly ceases to love the Lord.

By wisdom we mean wisdom in spiritual matters. From this as a wellspring flows wisdom in all else, which we call intelligence, and through this knowledge, which results from an affection for knowing truths.

A crown symbolizes wisdom, because wisdom occupies the highest place in a person and so crowns him. Nor is anything else symbolized by the crown of a king, for a king in the Word's spiritual sense is Divine truth (no. 20), and from Divine truth comes all wisdom.

[2] Wisdom is symbolically meant by a crown also in the following passages:

...I will make the horn of David grow..., and upon Him His crown shall flourish. (Psalms 132:17-18)

(Jehovah) put... earrings in your ears, and an ornate crown on your head. (Ezekiel 16:12)

This is said of Jerusalem, which symbolizes the church in respect to doctrine, and therefore the ornate crown is wisdom originating from Divine truth or the Word.

In that day Jehovah of Hosts will be for an ornate crown and a beautiful turban to the remnants of His people. (Isaiah 28:5)

This is said of the Lord, because it says "in that day." The ornate crown for which He will be is wisdom, and the beautiful turban is intelligence. The remnants of the people are people among whom the church will be.

[3] The crown and turban in Isaiah 62:1, 3 have the same symbolic meaning. So, too, does the plate upon the turban of Aaron in Exodus 28:36-37, which is also called a miter.

Furthermore, in the following:

Say to the king and his lady, "Lower yourselves, sit down, for the ornament of your head has come down, the crown of your beauty." (Jeremiah 13:18)

The joy of our heart has ceased... The crown has fallen from our head. (Lamentations 5:15-16)

He has stripped me of my glory, and taken the crown from my head. (Job 19:9)

You have profaned [by casting it] to the ground the crown (of Your anointed). (Psalms 89:39)

The crown in these places symbolizes wisdom.

  
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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.