The Bible

 

Lamentations 3

Study

   

1 I am the man that has seen affliction by the rod of his wrath.

2 He has led me and caused me to walk in darkness, and not in light.

3 Surely against me he turns his hand again and again all the day.

4 My flesh and my skin has he made old; he has broken my bones.

5 He has built against me, and surrounded me with gall and travail.

6 He has made me to dwell in dark places, as those that have been long dead.

7 He has walled me about, that I can't go forth; he has made my chain heavy.

8 Yes, when I cry, and call for help, he shuts out my prayer.

9 He has walled up my ways with cut stone; he has made my paths crooked.

10 He is to me as a bear lying in wait, as a lion in secret places.

11 He has turned aside my ways, and pulled me in pieces; he has made me desolate.

12 He has bent his bow, and set me as a mark for the arrow.

13 He has caused the shafts of his quiver to enter into my kidneys.

14 I am become a derision to all my people, and their song all the day.

15 He has filled me with bitterness, he has sated me with wormwood.

16 He has also broken my teeth with gravel stones; he has covered me with ashes.

17 You have removed my soul far off from peace; I forgot prosperity.

18 I said, My strength is perished, and my expectation from Yahweh.

19 Remember my affliction and my misery, the wormwood and the gall.

20 My soul still remembers them, and is bowed down within me.

21 This I recall to my mind; therefore have I hope.

22 [It is of] Yahweh's loving kindnesses that we are not consumed, because his compassion doesn't fail.

23 They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.

24 Yahweh is my portion, says my soul; therefore will I hope in him.

25 Yahweh is good to those who wait for him, to the soul that seeks him.

26 It is good that a man should hope and quietly wait for the salvation of Yahweh.

27 It is good for a man that he bear the yoke in his youth.

28 Let him sit alone and keep silence, because he has laid it on him.

29 Let him put his mouth in the dust, if so be there may be hope.

30 Let him give his cheek to him who strikes him; let him be filled full with reproach.

31 For the Lord will not cast off forever.

32 For though he cause grief, yet he will have compassion according to the multitude of his loving kindnesses.

33 For he does not afflict willingly, nor grieve the children of men.

34 To crush under foot all the prisoners of the earth,

35 To turn aside the right of a man before the face of the Most High,

36 To subvert a man in his cause, the Lord doesn't approve.

37 Who is he who says, and it comes to pass, when the Lord doesn't command it?

38 Doesn't evil and good come out of the mouth of the Most High?

39 Why does a living man complain, a man for the punishment of his sins?

40 Let us search and try our ways, and turn again to Yahweh.

41 Let us lift up our heart with our hands to God in the heavens.

42 We have transgressed and have rebelled; you have not pardoned.

43 You have covered with anger and pursued us; you have killed, you have not pitied.

44 You have covered yourself with a cloud, so that no prayer can pass through.

45 You have made us an off-scouring and refuse in the midst of the peoples.

46 All our enemies have opened their mouth wide against us.

47 Fear and the pit are come on us, devastation and destruction.

48 My eye runs down with streams of water, for the destruction of the daughter of my people.

49 My eye pours down, and doesn't cease, without any intermission,

50 Until Yahweh look down, and see from heaven.

51 My eye affects my soul, because of all the daughters of my city.

52 They have chased me relentlessly like a bird, those who are my enemies without cause.

53 They have cut off my life in the dungeon, and have cast a stone on me.

54 Waters flowed over my head; I said, I am cut off.

55 I called on your name, Yahweh, out of the lowest dungeon.

56 You heard my voice; don't hide your ear at my breathing, at my cry.

57 You drew near in the day that I called on you; you said, Don't be afraid.

58 Lord, you have pleaded the causes of my soul; you have redeemed my life.

59 Yahweh, you have seen my wrong. Judge my cause.

60 You have seen all their vengeance and all their devices against me.

61 You have heard their reproach, Yahweh, and all their devices against me,

62 The lips of those that rose up against me, and their device against me all the day.

63 You see their sitting down, and their rising up; I am their song.

64 You will render to them a recompense, Yahweh, according to the work of their hands.

65 You will give them hardness of heart, your curse to them.

66 You will pursue them in anger, and destroy them from under the heavens of Yahweh.

   

From Swedenborg's Works

 

Apocalypse Revealed #323

Study this Passage

  
/ 962  
  

323. With sword, with famine, with death, and by the beasts of the earth. This symbolically means, by doctrinal falsities, by evil practices, by self-love, and by lusts.

To be shown that a sword symbolizes truths fighting against evils and falsities and destroying them, and in an opposite sense, falsity fighting against goods and truths and destroying them, see nos. 52, 108, 117 above. Accordingly, because the subject is the destruction of all good in the church, a sword here symbolizes doctrinal falsities.

That a famine symbolizes evil practices - this we will confirm below.

Death symbolizes a person's self-love because death symbolizes the extinction of spiritual life, and thus natural life divorced from any spiritual life, as shown in no. 321 above, and this life is the life of a person's self-love; for this life causes a person to love nothing but himself and the world, and so to love also evils of every kind, evils which, because of that life's love, are delightful to him.

That beasts of the earth symbolize lusts arising from the love will be seen in no. 567 below.

Here we will say something about the symbolic meaning of famine. A famine symbolizes the privation and rejection of concepts of truth and goodness, springing from evil practices. It symbolizes as well an ignorance of concepts of truth and goodness, owing to an absence of these in the church. And it symbolizes also a desire to know and understand them.

[2] I. That a famine symbolizes the privation and rejection of concepts of truth and goodness, springing from evil practices, and thus symbolizes evil practices, can be seen from the following passages:

They shall be consumed by the sword and by famine, so that their corpses become food for the birds of heaven and for the beasts of the earth. (Jeremiah 16:4)

These two things shall befall you...: devastation and ruin, and famine and sword... (Isaiah 51:19)

Behold, I am visiting punishment upon them. The young men shall die by the sword; their sons and their daughters shall die by famine. (Jeremiah 11:22)

...deliver up her children to famine, and cause them to flow down upon the hands of the sword..., that their men may be put to death... (Jeremiah 18:21)

...I will send on them the sword, famine, and pestilence, and will make them like rough figs that cannot be eaten, they are so bad. And I will pursue them with the sword, with famine, and with pestilence. (Jeremiah 29:17-18)

I will send upon them the sword, famine, and pestilence, till they are consumed from the land... (Jeremiah 24:10)

...I proclaim liberty to you..., to the sword, to pestilence, and famine! And I will deliver you for turmoil to all nations. (Jeremiah 34:17)

...because you have defiled My sanctuary..., a third of you shall die of pestilence and be consumed with famine...; and a third shall fall by the sword... When I send against them the evil arrows of famine, which shall be for destruction... (Ezekiel 5:11-12, 16-17)

The sword is outside, and the pestilence and famine within. (Ezekiel 7:15)

...for all the evil abominations... they shall fall by the sword, by famine, and by pestilence. (Ezekiel 6:11-12)

...I will send My four evil judgments on Jerusalem - the sword, famine and wild beast, and pestilence - to cut off man and beast from it. (Ezekiel 14:13, 15, 21)

And so, too, elsewhere, as in Jeremiah 14:12-13, 15-16; 42:13-14, 16-18, 22; 44:12-13, 27, Mark 13:8, Luke 21:11. Sword, famine, pestilence and beasts in these places have similar symbolic meanings to those of the sword, famine, death, and beasts of the earth in the present verse. For the Word has a spiritual meaning in it in every single constituent, in which a sword means the destruction of spiritual life by falsities, in which famine means the destruction of spiritual life by evils, in which a beast of the earth means the destruction of spiritual life by the lusts accompanying falsity and evil, and in which pestilence and death means a complete destruction and thus damnation.

[3] II. That famine, or hunger, symbolizes an ignorance of concepts of truth and goodness, owing to an absence of these in the church, is clear as well from various passages in the Word, as in Isaiah 5:13; 8:19-22, Lamentations 2:19; 5:8-10, Amos 8:11-14, Job 5:17, 20, and elsewhere.

III. That famine or hunger symbolizes a desire to know and understand the church's truths and goods is apparent from the following: Isaiah 8:21; 32:6; 49:10; 58:6-7; Matthew 5:6; 25:35, 37, 44; Luke 1:53; John 6:35; and elsewhere.

  
/ 962  
  

Many thanks to the General Church of the New Jerusalem, and to Rev. N.B. Rogers, translator, for the permission to use this translation.

The Bible

 

Job 5:20

Study

       

20 In famine he will redeem you from death; in war, from the power of the sword.