The Bible

 

Ézéchiel 14:7

Study

       

7 Car tout homme de la maison d'Israël, ou des étrangers séjournant en Israël, qui s'est éloigné de moi, qui porte ses idoles dans son coeur, et qui attache les regards sur ce qui l'a fait tomber dans son iniquité, -s'il vient s'adresser au prophète pour me consulter par lui, -moi, l'Eternel, je lui répondrai par moi.

Commentary

 

Comfort

  
Christ Comforted by an Angel, by Paul Troger

When the Bible talks about someone being comforted or consoled, it generally means that they are being offered ideas that will help bring them to a more peaceful spiritual state, whether it is a new state or the restoration of one that had been under attack. It's interesting; we tend to think of comforting someone as an emotional thing, offering our own feelings to help them feel better. But the Writings say that the spiritual meaning of 'comfort' is actually more intellectual, coming when a person gains new true ideas.

In Genesis 5:29, this signifies doctrine whereby what was perverted may be restored. (Arcana Coelestia 531)

In Genesis 27:42, this signifies intent to invert the current spiritual state.

From Swedenborg's Works

 

Arcana Coelestia #553

Study this Passage

  
/ 10837  
  

553. In heaven those who are moved by mutual love are constantly approaching the spring-time of their youth. And the more thousands of years they live the more joyful and happy the spring-time which they are approaching. This process continues for ever, constantly bringing increases in joy and happiness in proportion to the advance and upward progress in mutual love, charity, and faith. Those of the feminine sex who have died worn out with age but who had lived in faith in the Lord, in charity towards the neighbour, and in happy conjugial love with their husbands, as the years pass by come more and more into the first freshness of youth and early womanhood, and into a beauty that excels every idea of beauty which the eye can possibly behold. In fact it is goodness and charity forming and producing a likeness of itself, and causing the joy and beauty of charity to shine out of every individual feature of the face in such a way that these too are forms of charity. When some people have seen these they have been dumbfounded.

[2] The form which charity takes is so plainly visible in the next life that charity itself is that which produces the form, as well as being that which is portrayed within it. Indeed that form is such that the whole of an angel, especially the face, is so to speak charity - charity which is visible to the eye and perceptible to the mind. When it is beheld that form is one of indescribable beauty which stirs with charity the inmost life itself of the beholder's mind. Through the beauty of that form truths of faith are displayed in a visual image from which they also are perceived. People who have lived in faith in the Lord, that is, faith that inheres in charity, in the next life become such forms, that is, forms of beauty. All angels are such forms, endlessly varying; and it is these forms that constitute heaven.

  
/ 10837  
  

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