New Christian Bible Study

The Bible

 

Hosea 8

Study

   

1 Let there be a trumpet in thy throat like an eagle upon the house of the Lord: because they have transgressed my covenant, and have violated my law.

2 They shall call upon me: O my God, we, Israel, know thee.

3 Israel hath cast off the thing that is good, the enemy shall pursue him.

4 They have reigned, but not by me: they have been princes, and I knew not: of their silver, and their gold they have made idols to themselves, that they might perish.

5 Thy calf, O Samaria, is cast off, my wrath is kindled against them. How long will they be incapable of being cleansed ?

6 For itself also is the invention of Israel: a workman made it, and it is no god: for the calf of Samaria shall be turned to spiders' webs.

7 For they shall sow wind, and reap a whirlwind, there is no standing stalk in it, the bud shall yield no meal; end if it should yield, strangers shall eat it.

8 Israel is swallowed up: now is he become among the nations like an unclean vessel.

9 For they are gone up to Assyria, a wild ass alone by himself: Ephraim hath given gifts to his lovers.

10 But even though they shall have hired the nations, now will I gather them together: and they shall rest a while from the burden of the king, and the princes.

11 Because Ephraim hath made many altars to sin: altars are become to him unto sin.

12 I shall write to him my manifold laws, which have been accounted as foreign.

13 They shall offer victims, they shall sacrifice flesh, and shall eat it, and the Lord will not receive them: now will he remember their iniquity, and will visit their sins: they shall return to Egypt.

14 And Israel hath forgotten his Maker, and hath built temples: and Juda hath built many fenced cities: and I will send a fire upon his cities, and it shall devour the houses thereof.

   

From Swedenborg's Works

 

Apocalypse Revealed #242

Study this Passage

  
/ 962  
  

242. The second living creature like a calf. This symbolizes the Divine truth of the Word in respect to its affection.

Beasts of the earth symbolize various natural affections. They are also embodiments of them. And a calf symbolizes an affection for knowing. This affection is represented by a calf in the spiritual world, and in the Word it is consequently also symbolized by a calf, as in Hosea,

...we repay (to Jehovah) the calves of our lips. (Hosea 14:2)

"Calves of the lips" are confessions from an affection for truth.

In Malachi:

To you who fear My name the sun of righteousness shall arise with healing in its wings... that you may grow fat like fattened calves. (Malachi 4:2)

A comparison is made with fattened calves because they symbolize people who are filled with concepts of truth and goodness owing to an affection for knowing them.

In the book of Psalms:

The voice of Jehovah... makes (the cedars of Lebanon) dance like a calf... (Psalms 29:5, 6)

The cedars of Lebanon symbolize concepts of truth. That is why the passage says that the voice of Jehovah makes them dance like a calf. The voice of Jehovah is Divine truth, in the process here of affecting.

[2] Since the Egyptians loved knowledge, they therefore made themselves calves as a sign of their affection for it. But after they began to worship the calves as deities, then calves in the Word symbolized affections for knowing falsities, as in Jeremiah 46:20-21). Therefore we are told in Hosea:

...they have made for themselves a molten image... of their silver... Sacrificing a human being, they kiss the calves. (Hosea 13:2)

To make for oneself a molten image of silver means, symbolically, to falsify truth. To sacrifice a human being means, symbolically, to destroy wisdom. And to kiss calves means, symbolically, to accept falsities out of an affection for them.

In Isaiah:

There the calf will feed; there it will lie down and consume its branches. (Isaiah 27:10)

The same is symbolically meant by the calf in Jeremiah 34:18-20.

[3] Since all Divine worship springs from affections for truth and goodness and so for concepts of them, therefore the sacrifices in which the worship of the church primarily consisted among the children of Israel used various animals, such as lambs, she-goats, kids, sheep, he-goats, calves, and oxen; and calves were used because they symbolized an affection for knowing truths and goods, which is the first natural affection. This affection was symbolically meant by the sacrifices of calves in Exodus 29:11-12, 1 1 Samuel 1:25; 16:2, 1 Kings 18:23-26, 33.

The second living creature looked like a calf because the Divine truth of the Word, which it symbolizes, affects hearts, and so teaches and instills.

Footnotes:

1. Prima editio: 29.

  
/ 962  
  

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

©2024 New Christian Bible Study Corporation. All rights reserved. Printed from newchristianbiblestudy.org