The Bible

 

Ezekiel 43:18

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18 And he said to me: Son of man, thus saith the Lord God: These are the ceremonies of the altar, in what day soever it shall be made: that holocausts may be offered upon it, and blood poured out.

Commentary

 

Throne

  

'The Lord's throne' signifies, in general, the whole heaven, and specifically, the spiritual heaven, and by extension, divine truth proceeding, and so, everything of heaven and the church.

In Genesis 41:40, this signifies things that are natural. (Arcana Coelestia 5313)

In Exodus 11:5, this signifies the falsified truths of faith that have wrongly receive attention. (Arcana Coelestia 7779)

'The throne built by Solomon,' as mentioned in 1 Kings 10:18-20, signifies both royalty and judgment.

In Isaiah 66:1, this signifies celestial and spiritual things which when they relate to the Divine are like natural things to man's spiritual and celestial. (Arcana Coelestia 2162[8])

In Matthew 25:31, this signifies judgment. (Arcana Coelestia 4809[3])

In Revelation 1:4, this signifies the universal heaven. 'Throne' signifies heaven and judgment.

'Throne,' as in Revelation 4:2, signifies a representation of judgment, because the things which John saw were representative visions. He saw them as he described them, but they were forms representative of things to come.

In Revelation 8:2, this signifies the church regarding doctrine.

'Throne,' as in Revelation 12:5, signifies the angelic heaven.

'Throne' also signifies the government of falsity and evil in Revelation 2:13, 8:2, Daniel 7:9, Haggai 2:22, and Isaiah 14:13.

(References: Apocalypse Explained 8 [2], 289)


From Swedenborg's Works

 

Arcana Coelestia #4603

Study this Passage

  
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4603. 'The sons of Jacob were twelve' means a state in which all things were now present in the Divine Natural. This is clear from the representation of 'Jacob' as the Divine Natural, often dealt with already; and from the meaning of 'twelve' as all, and when used in reference to the sons of Jacob, or to the tribes named after these, as all aspects of truth and good, dealt with in 2089, 2129, 2130, 3272, 3858, 3913, 3939. The subject so far has been the way in which the Lord made his Natural within Him Divine, for 'Jacob' has represented the Natural; but now the subject becomes the joining of the Divine Natural to the Rational. This joining together is represented by Jacob's coming to Isaac, for 'Isaac' represents the Lord's Divine Rational. This explains why all the sons of Jacob are listed once again, since every aspect of truth and good had to be present within the Natural before it could be fully joined to the Rational. The reason for this particular listing of them is the service which the natural renders the rational as the receptacle for it. But one should recognize that Jacob's sons are now mentioned in a different order from before; the sons of Bilhah and Zilpah - Dan, Naphtali, Gad, and Asher - are mentioned last, though in actual fact these were born before Issachar, Zebulun, Joseph, and Benjamin. The reason for this difference is that at this point the subject is the order in which truths and goods exist within the Natural when this has been made Divine, for it is the state belonging to the subject under discussion that determines the order in which their names appear, see 3862, 3926, 3939.

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