The Bible

 

Lamentations 3

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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 #573

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573. Whose feet were like those of a bear. This symbolically means, full of misconceptions taken from the literal sense of the Word, read but not understood.

Feet symbolize the natural support which is the basis on which the heresy meant by the leopard rests and, so to speak, propels itself, and that support is the literal sense of the Word. A bear symbolizes people who read the Word but fail to understand it, so that they derive from it misconceptions.

That these are the people symbolized by bears became apparent to me from seeing bears in the spiritual world, and from seeing some people there wearing bearskins. They were all people who read the Word and did not see any doctrinal truth in it. They were also people who affirmed the appearances of truth there, resulting in misconceptions.

Some bears seen in the spiritual world are dangerous and some are not, and some also are white, but they are told apart by their heads. Bears that are not dangerous have heads like those of calves or sheep.

Bears symbolize people and things like this in the following passages:

A bear lying in wait for me has overturned my paths, a lion in hidden places has corrupted my ways... He has made me desolate. (Lamentations 3:9-11)

I will meet them like a bereaved bear..., and there I will devour them like a savage lion. The wild beast of the field shall rend them. (Hosea 13:8)

...there shall lie down... the calf and the young lion... The heifer and the bear shall graze. (Isaiah 11:6-7)

(The second beast that came up from the sea was) like a bear... and had three ribs in its mouth between its teeth. (Daniel 7:5)

The lion and bear that David smote, catching the lion by its beard (1 Samuel 17:34-37), have a similar symbolic meaning. So, too, in 2 Samuel 17:8.

[2] A lion and a bear are mentioned in these places because a lion symbolizes falsity destroying the Word's truths, and a bear symbolizes misconceptions that destroy them also, but not to the same degree. Thus we are told in Amos:

...the day of Jehovah...(a day of) darkness, and not light. It is as if one who flees from a lion comes upon a bear. (Amos 5:18-19)

In the second book of Kings we read that Elisha was mocked by some boys and called a baldhead, and that forty-two boys were therefore torn apart by two female bears from the woods (2 Kings 2:23-24). This occurred because Elisha represented the Lord in respect to the Word (no. 298), because baldness symbolized the Word without its literal sense, thus having no reality (no. 47), because the number forty-two symbolized blasphemy (no. 583), and because female bears symbolized the literal sense of the Word read indeed, but not understood.

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