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Lamentations 5

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1 Remember, O LORD, what is come upon us: consider, and behold our reproach.

2 Our inheritance is turned to strangers, our houses to aliens.

3 We are orphans and fatherless, our mothers are as widows.

4 We have drunken our water for money; our wood is sold unto us.

5 Our necks are under persecution: we labour, and have no rest.

6 We have given the hand to the Egyptians, and to the Assyrians, to be satisfied with bread.

7 Our fathers have sinned, and are not; and we have borne their iniquities.

8 Servants have ruled over us: there is none that doth deliver us out of their hand.

9 We gat our bread with the peril of our lives because of the sword of the wilderness.

10 Our skin was black like an oven because of the terrible famine.

11 They ravished the women in Zion, and the maids in the cities of Judah.

12 Princes are hanged up by their hand: the faces of elders were not honoured.

13 They took the young men to grind, and the children fell under the wood.

14 The elders have ceased from the gate, the young men from their musick.

15 The joy of our heart is ceased; our dance is turned into mourning.

16 The crown is fallen from our head: woe unto us, that we have sinned!

17 For this our heart is faint; for these things our eyes are dim.

18 Because of the mountain of Zion, which is desolate, the foxes walk upon it.

19 Thou, O LORD, remainest for ever; thy throne from generation to generation.

20 Wherefore dost thou forget us for ever, and forsake us so long time?

21 Turn thou us unto thee, O LORD, and we shall be turned; renew our days as of old.

22 But thou hast utterly rejected us; thou art very wroth against us.

   

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Arcana Coelestia #4336

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4336. Genesis 33

1. And Jacob lifted up his eyes and saw, and behold, Esau was coming, and four hundred men with him. And he divided the sons over towards Leah, and over towards Rachel, and over towards the two servant-girls.

2. And he put the servant-girls and their sons first, and Leah and her sons further back, and Rachel and Joseph even further back.

3. And he himself passed over in front of them, and bowed to the ground seven times, until he came right up to his brother.

4. And Esau ran to meet him, and embraced him, and fell on his neck, and kissed him; and they wept.

5. And he lifted up his eyes and saw the women and their sons, and said, Who are these with you? And he said, The sons whom God has graciously bestowed on your servant.

6. And the servant-girls came near, they and their sons, and bowed down.

7. And Leah also came near, then her sons, and they bowed down; and after that Joseph came near, then Rachel, and they bowed down.

8. And he said, What do you mean by all this camp which I met? And he said, To find favour in the eyes of my lord.

9. And Esau said, I have much, my brother; let what is yours be yours.

10. And Jacob said, No, I beg of you; if now I have found favour in your eyes, then take my gift from my hand; inasmuch as I have seen your face, as though seeing the face of God, and you have accepted me.

11. Take now my blessing which is brought to you, because God has graciously bestowed much on me, and because I have everything. And he urged him, and he took it.

12. And he said, Let us travel on and go, and I will go beside you.

13. And he said to him, My lord knows that the children are tender, and the flocks and herds with me are suckling, and if the men overdrive them for one day, all the flocks will die.

14. Let my lord now pass over before his servant, and I will move on slowly at the walking-pace of the cattle 1 that are before me, and at the walking-pace 2 of the children, until I come to my lord, to Seir.

15. And Esau said, Let me now place with you some of the people who are with me. And he said, Why so? Let me find favour in my lord's eyes.

16. And Esau returned on that day on his own way, to Seir.

17. And Jacob travelled on to Succoth, and built a house for himself, and made booths for his cattle; therefore he called the name of the place Succoth.

18. And Jacob came to Salem, the city of Shechem, which is in the land of Canaan, as he was coming from Paddan Aram; and he encamped towards the face of the city.

19. And he bought the portion of the field where he had stretched his tent, from the hand of the sons of Hamor, the father of Shechem, for a hundred kesitahs.

20. And he set up an altar there and called it El Elohe Israel.

CONTENTS

The subject now in the internal sense is the joining together of Divine Natural Good, meant by 'Esau', and the Good of Truth, meant by 'Jacob'. So the subject is the submission of this latter Good and the introduction of it into Divine Natural Good. The process by which this is effected is described. In the last part of the chapter the subject is the acquisition of interior truths.

Footnotes:

1. lit at the foot of the work

2. literally, at the foot

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