The Bible

 

Ezekiel 32

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1 And it cometh to pass, in the twelfth year, in the twelfth month, in the first of the month, hath a word of Jehovah been unto me, saying,

2 `Son of man, lift up a lamentation for Pharaoh king of Egypt, and thou hast said unto him: A young lion of nations thou hast been like, And thou [art] as a dragon in the seas, And thou comest forth with thy flowings, And dost trouble the waters with thy feet, And thou dost foul their flowings.

3 Thus said the Lord Jehovah: And -- I have spread out for thee My net, With an assembly of many peoples, And they have brought thee up in My net.

4 And I have left thee in the land, On the face of the field I do cast thee out, And have caused to dwell upon thee every fowl of the heavens, And have satisfied out of thee the beasts of the whole earth.

5 And I have put thy flesh on the mountains, And filled the valleys [with] thy hugeness,

6 And watered the land with thy flowing, From thy blood -- unto the mountains, And streams are filled from thee.

7 And in quenching thee I have covered the heavens, And have made black their stars, The sun with a cloud I do cover, And the moon causeth not its light to shine.

8 All luminaries of light in the heavens, I make black over thee, And I have given darkness over thy land, An affirmation of the Lord Jehovah,

9 And I have vexed the heart of many peoples, In My bringing in thy destruction among nations, Unto lands that thou hast not known.

10 And I have made many peoples astonished at thee, And their kings are afraid at thee with trembling, In My brandishing My sword before their faces, And they have trembled every moment, Each for his life -- in the day of thy fall.

11 For thus said the Lord Jehovah: A sword of the king of Babylon entereth thee,

12 By swords of the mighty I cause thy multitude to fall, The terrible of nations -- all of them, And they have spoiled the excellency of Egypt, And destroyed hath been all her multitude.

13 And I have destroyed all her beasts, From beside many waters, And trouble them not doth a foot of man any more, Yea, the hoofs of beasts trouble them not.

14 Then do I cause their waters to sink, And their rivers as oil I cause to go, An affirmation of the Lord Jehovah.

15 In My making the land of Egypt a desolation, And desolated hath been the land of its fulness, In My smiting all the inhabitants in it, And they have known that I [am] Jehovah.

16 A lamentation it [is], and they have lamented her, Daughters of the nations do lament her, For Egypt, and for all her multitude, they lament her, An affirmation of the Lord Jehovah.'

17 And it cometh to pass, in the twelfth year, in the fifteenth of the month, hath a word of Jehovah been unto me, saying,

18 `Son of man, Wail for the multitude of Egypt, And cause it to go down, It -- and the daughters of honourable nations, Unto the earth -- the lower parts, With those going down to the pit.

19 Than whom hast thou been more pleasant? Go down, and be laid with the uncircumcised.

20 In the midst of the pierced of the sword they fall, [To] the sword she hath been given, They drew her out, and all her multitude.

21 Speak to him do the gods of the mighty out of the midst of sheol, With his helpers -- they have gone down, They have lain with the uncircumcised, The pierced of the sword.

22 There [is] Asshur, and all her assembly, Round about him [are] his graves, All of them [are] wounded, who are falling by sword,

23 Whose graves are appointed in the sides of the pit, And her assembly is round about her grave, All of them wounded, falling by sword, Because they gave terror in the land of the living.

24 There [is] Elam, and all her multitude, Round about [is] her grave, All of them wounded, who are falling by sword, Who have gone down uncircumcised unto the earth -- the lower parts, Because they gave their terror in the land of the living, And they bear their shame with those going down to the pit.

25 In the midst of the wounded they have appointed a bed for her with all her multitude, Round about him [are] her graves, All of them uncircumcised, pierced of the sword, For their terror was given in the land of the living, And they bear their shame with those going down to the pit, In the midst of the pierced he hath been put.

26 There [is] Meshech, Tubal, and all her multitude, Round about him [are] her graves, All of them uncircumcised, pierced of the sword, For they gave their terror in the land of the living,

27 And they lie not with the mighty, Who are falling of the uncircumcised, Who have gone down to sheol with their weapons of war, And they put their swords under their heads, And their iniquities are on their bones, For the terror of the mighty [is] in the land of the living.

28 And thou, in the midst of the uncircumcised art broken, And dost lie with the pierced of the sword.

29 There [is] Edom, her kings, and all her princes, Who have been given up in their might, With the pierced of the sword, They with the uncircumcised do lie, And with those going down to the pit.

30 There [are] princes of the north, All of them, and every Zidonian, Who have gone down with the pierced in their terror, Of their might they are ashamed, And they lie uncircumcised with the pierced of the sword, And they bear their shame with those going down to the pit.

31 Then doth Pharaoh see, And he hath been comforted for all his multitude, The pierced of the sword -- Pharaoh and all his force, An affirmation of the Lord Jehovah.

32 For I have given his terror in the land of the living, And he hath been laid down in the midst of the uncircumcised, With the pierced of the sword -- Pharaoh, and all his multitude, An affirmation of the Lord Jehovah!'

   

From Swedenborg's Works

 

Apocalypse Revealed #49

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49. His feet were like fine brass, as though fired in a furnace. (1:15) This symbolizes natural Divine good.

The Lord's feet symbolize His natural Divinity. Fire or being fired symbolizes goodness. And fine brass symbolizes the natural goodness of truth. Consequently the feet of the Son of Man like fine brass, as though fired in a furnace, symbolize natural Divine good.

His feet have this symbolic meaning because of their correspondence.

Present in the Lord, and so emanating from the Lord, are a celestial Divinity, a spiritual Divinity, and a natural Divinity. His celestial Divinity is meant by the head of the Son of Man; His spiritual Divinity by His eyes and by His breast girded with a golden girdle; and His natural Divinity by His feet.

[2] Because these three elements are present in the Lord, therefore the same three are also present in the angelic heaven. The third or highest heaven exists on the celestial Divine level, the second or middle heaven on the spiritual Divine level, and the first or lowest heaven on the natural Divine level. The like is the case with the church on earth. For the whole of heaven is, in the Lord's sight, like a single person, in which those who are governed by the Lord's celestial Divinity form the head, and those who are governed by His spiritual Divinity form the trunk, while those who are governed by His natural Divinity form the feet.

For this reason, too, every person, having been created in the image of God, has in him the same three degrees, and as they are opened he becomes an angel either of the third heaven, or of the second, or of the last.

It is owing to this also that the Word contains three levels of meaning - a celestial one, a spiritual one, and a natural one.

The reality of this may be seen in Angelic Wisdom Regarding Divine Love and Wisdom, particularly in Part Three, in which we discussed these three degrees.

To be shown that feet, the soles of the feet, and heels correspond to natural attributes in people, and that in the Word, therefore, they symbolize natural attributes, see in Arcana Coelestia (The Secrets of Heaven), published in London, nos. 2162 and 4938-4952.

[3] Natural Divine good is also symbolically meant by feet in the following passages. In Daniel:

I lifted my eyes and looked; behold, a... man clothed in linen garments, whose loins were girded with the gold of Uphaz! And his body was like beryl, and... his eyes like torches of fire, his arms and his feet like the sheen of burnished bronze. (Daniel 10:5-6)

In the book of Revelation:

I saw... an angel coming down from heaven, ...his feet like pillars of fire. (Revelation 10:1)

And in Ezekiel:

(The feet of the cherubim) sparkled like the sheen of burnished bronze. (Ezekiel 1:7)

Angels and cherubim so appeared for the reason that the Lord's Divinity was represented in them.

[4] Since the Lord's church exists below the heavens, thus under the Lord's feet, it is therefore called His footstool in the following places:

The glory of Lebanon shall come to you..., to beautify the place of My sanctuary; ...I will make the place of My feet honorable. And... they shall bow themselves at the soles of your feet. (Isaiah 60:13-14)

Heaven is My throne and the earth is My footstool. (Isaiah 66:1)

(God) does not remember His footstool in the day of His anger. (Lamentations 2:1)

...worship (Jehovah) in the direction of His footstool. (Psalms 99:5)

Behold, we heard of it in Ephrathah (Bethlehem).... We will go into His dwelling places, we will bow ourselves at His footstool. (Psalms 132:6-7)

That is why worshipers fell at the Lord's feet (Matthew 28:9, Mark 5:22, Luke 8:41, John 11:32), and why they kissed His feet and wiped them with their hair (Luke 7:37-38, 44-46, John 11:2; 12:3).

[5] Because feet symbolize the natural self, therefore the Lord said to Peter, when He washed Peter's feet,

He who is washed needs only to have his feet washed, and he is completely clean. (John 13:10)

To wash the feet is to purify the natural self. When it has been purified, the whole self also is purified, as we showed many times in Arcana Coelestia (The Secrets of Heaven), and in The Doctrines of the New Jerusalem. 1 The natural self, which is also the outer self, is purified when it refrains from the evils which the spiritual or inner self sees to be evils and ones to be shunned.

[6] Now because the feet mean the natural component of a person, and this perverts everything if it is not washed or purified, therefore the Lord says,

If your foot causes you to stumble, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life lame, rather than to have two feet and be cast into hell, into the unquenchable fire... (Mark 9:45)

The foot here does not mean the foot, but the natural self.

The like is meant by treading down the good pasture with the feet and troubling waters with the feet (Ezekiel 32:2; 34:18-19, Daniel 7:7, 19, and elsewhere).

[7] Since the Son of Man means the Lord in relation to the Word, it is apparent that His feet mean the Word in its natural sense as well, which we dealt with at length in The Doctrine of the New Jerusalem Regarding the Sacred Scripture, and also that the Lord came into the world to fulfill everything in the Word and to become thereby an embodiment of the Word, even in its outmost expressions (The Doctrine of the New Jerusalem Regarding the Sacred Scripture, nos. 98-100). But this is a secret for people who will be in the New Jerusalem.

[8] The Lord's natural Divinity was also symbolized by the bronze serpent that Moses was commanded to set up in the wilderness, so that all who had been bitten by serpents were healed by looking at it (Numbers 21:6, 8-9). That this symbolized the Lord's natural Divinity, and that those people are saved who look to it, the Lord Himself teaches in John:

As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life. (John 3:14-15)

The serpent was made of bronze because bronze, like fine brass, symbolizes the natural self in respect to good, as may be seen in no. 775 below.

Footnotes:

1. Perhaps The Doctrine of the New Jerusalem Regarding the Lord, The Doctrine of the New Jerusalem Regarding the Sacred Scripture, The Doctrine of Life for the New Jerusalem, and The Doctrine of the New Jerusalem Regarding Faith (Amsterdam, 1763). But perhaps The New Jerusalem and its Heavenly Doctrine (London, 1758).

  
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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.