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Klagelieder 5

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1 Gedenke (Das fünfte Lied besteht aus zweizeiligen Strophen, welche bloß ihrer Zahl nach den Buchstaben des Alphabets entsprechen,) Jehova, dessen, was uns geschehen! schaue her und sieh unsere Schmach!

2 Unser Erbteil ist Fremden zugefallen, unsere Häuser Ausländern.

3 Wir sind Waisen, ohne Vater; unsere Mütter sind wie Witwen.

4 Unser Wasser trinken wir um Geld, unser Holz bekommen wir gegen Zahlung.

5 Unsere Verfolger sind uns auf dem Nacken; wir ermatten, man läßt uns keine uhe.

6 Ägypten reichen wir die Hand (d. h. unterwerfen wir uns,) und Assyrien, um mit Brot gesättigt zu werden.

7 Unsere Väter haben gesündigt, sie sind nicht mehr; wir, wir tragen ihre Missetaten.

8 Knechte herrschen über uns; da ist niemand, der uns aus ihrer Hand reiße.

9 Wir holen unser Brot mit Gefahr unseres Lebens, wegen des Schwertes der Wüste.

10 Vor den Gluten des Hungers brennt unsere Haut wie ein Ofen.

11 Sie haben Weiber geschwächt in Zion, Jungfrauen in den Städten Judas.

12 Fürsten sind durch ihre Hand aufgehängt, das Angesicht der Alten wird nicht geehrt.

13 Jünglinge tragen die Handmühle, und Knaben straucheln unter dem Holze.

14 Die Alten bleiben fern (Eig. feiern) vom Tore, die Jünglinge von ihrem Saitenspiel.

15 Die Freude unseres Herzens hat aufgehört, in Trauer ist unser eigen verwandelt.

16 Gefallen ist die Krone unseres Hauptes. Wehe uns! denn wir haben gesündigt.

17 Darum ist unser Herz siech geworden, um dieser Dinge willen sind unsere Augen verdunkelt:

18 Wegen des Berges Zion, der verwüstet ist; Füchse streifen auf ihm umher.

19 Du, Jehova, thronst in Ewigkeit; dein Thron ist von Geschlecht zu Geschlecht.

20 Warum willst du uns für immer vergessen, uns verlassen auf immerdar (W. auf Länge der Tage?)

21 Jehova, bringe uns zu dir zurück, daß wir umkehren; erneuere unsere Tage wie vor alters!

22 Oder solltest du uns gänzlich verworfen haben, gar zu sehr auf uns zürnen?

   

From Swedenborg's Works

 

Arcana Coelestia #1914

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1914. That 'may the wrong done to me be on you! I gave my servant-girl into your bosom' means its unwillingness to take any blame is clear without explanation. In the internal sense these words embody within themselves the truth that the Lord perceived this first rational to be such as despised intellectual truth, and for that reason He reproached it. The Lord did indeed think from intellectual truth, as stated above in 1904; and because that truth was superior to the rational, He was able to perceive and see the nature of the rational, that is to say, that it held that truth in contempt.

[2] The Lord's being able from the interior man to perceive and see the nature of the new rational within Himself becomes clear from the fact that what is interior is able to perceive that which occurs in the exterior, or what amounts to the same, what is higher is able to see that which occurs in that which is lower, but not the reverse. Moreover, those who have conscience are able and are accustomed to do the same, for when anything contrary to the truth constituting conscience enters their thought or the intentions of their will, they not only recognize it for what it is but also pour blame upon it; indeed it grieves them that their own nature is such. This is all the more true of those who have perception, for perception is more interior within the rational. What then could the Lord not do who had Divine celestial perception and whose thought sprang from the affection for intellectual truth which is above the rational? Therefore He could not be anything else but righteously angry since He knew that no evil or falsity at all stemmed from Himself and that from the affection for truth He strove anxiously with all His might so that the rational might be pure. From this it becomes clear that the Lord did not despise intellectual truth, yet perceived that the first rational with Him did so.

[3] What thinking from intellectual truth is cannot be explained intelligibly, all the less so because nobody except the Lord has ever thought from that affection and that kind of truth. Anyone who thinks from them is above the angelic heaven, for the angels of the third heaven do not think from intellectual truth but from the interior part of the rational. But to the extent that the Lord united the Human Essence to the Divine Essence, He thought from Divine Good itself, that is, from Jehovah.

[4] The early fathers of the Most Ancient Church, who had perception, thought from the interior rational. The fathers of the Ancient Church, who did not have perception but conscience, thought from the exterior or natural rational. But all who do not have conscience never think from the rational at all, since they have no rational however much they appear to do so. Instead they think from the sensory and the bodily experience of the natural. People who do not have conscience are unable to think from the rational for the reason, as has been stated, that they have no rational. The rational man is one in whom the good and truth of faith are the substance of his thought and never one who thinks in opposition to these. Those in whom evil and falsity are the substance of their thought are insane as to their thought and therefore the rational cannot be attributed to them.

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