The Bible

 

Hosea 8

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1 "Put the trumpet to your lips! Something like an eagle is over Yahweh's house, because they have broken my covenant, and rebelled against my law.

2 They cry to me, 'My God, we Israel acknowledge you!'

3 Israel has cast off that which is good. The enemy will pursue him.

4 They have set up kings, but not by me. They have made princes, and I didn't approve. Of their silver and their gold they have made themselves idols, that they may be cut off.

5 Let Samaria throw out his calf idol! My anger burns against them! How long will it be until they are capable of purity?

6 For this is even from Israel! The workman made it, and it is no God; indeed, the calf of Samaria shall be broken in pieces.

7 For they sow the wind, and they will reap the whirlwind. He has no standing grain. The stalk will yield no head. If it does yield, strangers will swallow it up.

8 Israel is swallowed up. Now they are among the nations like a worthless thing.

9 For they have gone up to Assyria, like a wild donkey wandering alone. Ephraim has hired lovers for himself.

10 But although they sold themselves among the nations, I will now gather them; and they begin to waste away because of the oppression of the king of mighty ones.

11 Because Ephraim has multiplied altars for sinning, they became for him altars for sinning.

12 I wrote for him the many things of my law; but they were regarded as a strange thing.

13 As for the sacrifices of my offerings, they sacrifice flesh and eat it; But Yahweh doesn't accept them. Now he will remember their iniquity, and punish their sins. They will return to Egypt.

14 For Israel has forgotten his Maker and built palaces; and Judah has multiplied fortified cities; but I will send a fire on his cities, and it will devour its fortresses."

   

Commentary

 

Cut off, to be

  

In Daniel 9:26, this signifies that divine truth shall be taken from the people, but will live again in a new church. (Apocalypse Explained 315[23])

In Genesis 17:14, this signifies eternal death. (Arcana Coelestia 2058)

In Exodus 23:23, this signifies that hell is removed solely through the protection of heaven by the Lord. (Arcana Coelestia 9316) To be cut off, as in Genesis 41:36, signifies to perish.

(References: Arcana Coelestia 5302, Genesis 41)

From Swedenborg's Works

 

Arcana Coelestia #5302

Study this Passage

  
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5302. 'And the land will not be cut off in the famine' means lest the person perishes - through an absence of truth. This is clear from the meaning of 'being cut off' as perishing, and from the meaning of 'the land', in this case the land of Egypt, as the natural mind, dealt with immediately above in 5301; and because it is the natural mind, it is the person's true self, since a human being is a human being by virtue of his mind, it being the actual mind itself that constitutes a person, and the kind of mind he has that determines what kind of a person he is. By the mind is meant a person's understanding and will, consequently his essential life. People who are stupid imagine that a human being is a human being by virtue of his outward appearance, that is to say, because he possesses a human face. Others who are a little less stupid say that the human being is a human being because he has the ability to speak, while others again who are less stupid still say that the human being is a human being because he has the ability to think. But a human being is not a human being for any of these reasons but because he has the capacity to think what is true and to will what is good; and when he thinks what is true and wills what is good he has the capacity to behold what is Divine and, perceiving what it is, to accept it.

[2] This is what distinguishes a human being from animals. Not merely his human appearance, or his ability to speak, or his ability to think make him a human being; for if he thinks what is false and wills what is evil, that makes him not only like but worse than an animal. For he then uses those abilities to destroy what is human within himself and to make a wild animal of himself. This is particularly evident from people of this kind in the next life, for when they are seen in the light of heaven, and also when angels see them, they look at that moment like monsters, and some of them like wild animals. The deceitful look like snakes, and others like something different again. But when they are taken away from the light of heaven and are returned to their own inferior light which they have in hell, they look to one another like human beings. But the implications of all this - of the fact that a person will perish in times when truth is absent if he has no forms of good and truth stored away by the Lord in the interior parts of his mind, meant by 'food kept as a reserve for the land, for the seven years of famine, so that the land is not cut off in the famine' - will be stated in the sections that follow next in the present chapter.

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