The Bible

 

Lamentations 5

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1 Remember, Yahweh, what has come on us: Look, and see 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 to us.

5 Our pursuers are on our necks: We are weary, and have no rest.

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

7 Our fathers sinned, and are no more; We have borne their iniquities.

8 Servants rule over us: There is none to deliver us out of their hand.

9 We get our bread at the peril of our lives, Because of the sword of the wilderness.

10 Our skin is black like an oven, Because of the burning heat of famine.

11 They ravished the women in Zion, The virgins in the cities of Judah.

12 Princes were hanged up by their hand: The faces of elders were not honored.

13 The young men bare the mill; The children stumbled under the wood.

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

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

16 The crown is fallen from our head: Woe to us! for we have sinned.

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

18 For the mountain of Zion, which is desolate: The foxes walk on it.

19 You, Yahweh, remain forever; Your throne is from generation to generation.

20 Why do you forget us forever, [And] forsake us so long time?

21 Turn us to yourself, Yahweh, and we shall be turned. Renew our days as of old.

22 But you have utterly rejected us; You are very angry against us.

   

From Swedenborg's Works

 

Apocalypse Explained #751

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751. Therefore rejoice, ye heavens, and ye that dwell in them.- That this signifies the salvation and consequent joy of those who become spiritual by the reception of Divine Truth, is evident from the signification of rejoicing, as denoting joy on account of salvation; from the signification of the heavens, as denoting those who are spiritual (concerning which we shall speak presently); and from the signification of ye that dwell, as denoting those who live, here spiritually. That to dwell signifies to live, may be seen above (n. 133, 479, 662). The heavens signify those who are spiritual, because all who are in the heavens are spiritual, and because men who have become spiritual are also in the heavens, although they are in the world as to the body; therefore ye that dwell in the heavens means not only angels, but also men, for every man with whom the interior mind, which is called the spiritual mind, has been opened, is in the heavens, indeed, he also sometimes appears amongst the angels there. That this is so, has not been known in the world up to the present time. It must therefore be understood, that man as to his spirit is among spirits and angels, and indeed in that society of them into which he is to come after death. The reason of this is that the spiritual mind of man is formed exactly according to the image of heaven, and in such a way that it is a heaven in least form; consequently that mind, although still in the body, must nevertheless be where its form is. But this has been more fully dealt with in Heaven and Hell 51-58), where it is shown that every angel, and also every man as to his interiors, if he be spiritual, is a heaven in its least form, corresponding to heaven in its greatest form. For this reason where the Word treats of the creation of heaven and earth, the internal and external church is in general meant, and, in particular, the internal and external man, that is the spiritual and natural man. From these things it is evident that the heavens and those that dwell in them signify all who are there, and also those men who are becoming spiritual by the reception of Divine Truth in doctrine and life.

  
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Translation by Isaiah Tansley. Many thanks to the Swedenborg Society for the permission to use this translation.

The Bible

 

Luke 17:33

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33 Whoever seeks to save his life loses it, but whoever loses his life preserves it.