The Bible

 

Ezekiel 16:22

Study

       

22 And in all thine abominations and thy whoredoms thou hast not remembered the days of thy youth, when thou wast naked and bare, and wast polluted in thy blood.

Commentary

 

Furrows

  

In Psalm 65:10, this signifies things of the church that will become productive and full of knowledge. (Apocalypse Explained 644)

In Psalm 129:3, to make long furrows signifies the state of good, or its holiness, or here the profanation of the holy things of the church. (Arcana Coelestia 650)

In Ezekiel 17:10, this signifies the effect when there is no good in a particular church. (Apocalypse Explained 419[26])

In Hosea 10:4, this signifies the church devastated to such a degree that at heart they worship another god, and so the evils of punishment are brought upon them. (The Inner Meaning of the Prophets and Psalms 193)

From Swedenborg's Works

 

Arcana Coelestia #215

Study this Passage

  
/ 10837  
  

215. The proprium is nothing but evil and falsity. This has been made clear to me from the fact that anything spirits at any time have spoken from themselves has been evil and false, and so much so that the moment I was made to realize that it originated in themselves I knew it was false, even though, when they spoke, they were so sure of its being the truth that they were in no doubt about it. The same is true of the person who speaks from himself. Similarly whenever people have started to reason about the things which constituted spiritual and celestial life or about those which comprised faith, I have been allowed to perceive that they doubted, indeed denied, those things; for reasoning about faith amounts to doubting and denying. And because they reason from themselves, that is, from the proprium, they plunge into utter falsities, and therefore into abysmal thick darkness, that is, thick darkness of falsities. At such times the tiniest quibble weighs more heavily than a thousand truths, just as a speck of dust deposited on the pupil of the eye prevents it from seeing the universe and everything it contains. The Lord speaks of these people in Isaiah as follows,

Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes, and in their own sight are intelligent! Isaiah 5:21

And in the same prophet,

Your wisdom and your knowledge led you astray, and you said in your heart, I am, and there is no one else besides me. And evil will come upon you, whose origin you do not know, and disaster will befall you, which you will not be able to expiate, and vastation will come upon you suddenly of which you know not. Isaiah 47:10-11.

In Jeremiah,

Every man has been made stupid by knowledge; every metal-caster is put to shame by his statue, for the idol he moulds is a lie, and there is no spirit in those things. Jeremiah 51:17.

'Statue' stands for the falsity which belongs to the proprium, and 'idol' for the evil which belongs to it.

  
/ 10837  
  

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