The Bible

 

Ezekiel 7

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1 And there is a word of Jehovah unto me, saying, `And thou, son of man, Thus said the Lord Jehovah to the ground of Israel:

2 An end, come hath the end on the four corners of the land.

3 Now [is] the end unto thee, And I have sent Mine anger upon thee, And judged thee according to thy ways, And set against thee all thine abominations.

4 And no pity on thee hath Mine eye, nor do I spare, For thy ways against thee I do set, And thine abominations are in thy midst, And ye have known that I [am] Jehovah.

5 Thus said the Lord Jehovah: Evil, a single Evil, lo, it hath come.

6 An end hath come, come hath the end, It hath waked for thee, lo, it hath come.

7 Come hath the morning unto thee, O inhabitant of the land! Come hath the time, near [is] a day of trouble, And not the shouting of mountains.

8 Now, shortly I pour out My fury on thee, And have completed Mine anger against thee, And judged thee according to thy ways, And set against thee all thine abominations.

9 And not pity doth Mine eye, nor do I spare, According to thy ways unto thee I give, And thine abominations are in thy midst, And ye have known that I [am] Jehovah the smiter.

10 Lo, the day, lo, it hath come, Gone forth hath the morning, Blossomed hath the rod, flourished the pride.

11 The violence hath risen to a rod of wickedness, There is none of them, nor of their multitude, Nor of their noise, nor is there wailing for them.

12 Come hath the time, arrived hath the day, The buyer doth not rejoice, And the seller doth not become a mourner, For wrath [is] unto all its multitude.

13 For the seller to the sold thing turneth not, And yet among the living [is] their life, For the vision [is] unto all its multitude, It doth not turn back, And none by his iniquity doth strengthen his life.

14 They have blown with a trumpet to prepare the whole, And none is going to battle, For My wrath [is] unto all its multitude.

15 The sword [is] without, And the pestilence and the famine within, He who is in a field by sword dieth, And he who is in a city, famine and pestilence devour him.

16 And escaped away have their fugitives, And they have been on the mountains As doves of the valleys, All of them make a noising -- each for his iniquity.

17 All the hands are feeble, and all knees go -- waters.

18 And they have girded on sackcloth, And covered them hath trembling, And unto all faces [is] shame, And on all their heads -- baldness.

19 Their silver into out-places they cast, And their gold impurity becometh. Their silver and their gold is not able to deliver them, In a day of the wrath of Jehovah, Their soul they do not satisfy, And their bowels they do not fill, For the stumbling-block of their iniquity it hath been.

20 As to the beauty of his ornament, For excellency He set it, And the images of their abominations, Their detestable things -- they made in it, Therefore I have given it to them for impurity,

21 And I have given it into the hand of the strangers for a prey, And to the wicked of the land for a spoil, And they have polluted it.

22 And I have turned My face from them, And they have polluted My hidden place, Yea, come into it have destroyers, and polluted it.

23 Make the chain; for the land Hath been full of bloody judgments, And the city hath been full of violence.

24 And I have brought in the wicked of the nations, And they have possessed their houses, And I have caused to cease the excellency of the strong, And polluted have been those sanctifying them.

25 Destruction hath come, And they have sought peace, and there is none.

26 Mischief on mischief cometh, and report is on report, And they have sought a vision from a prophet, And law doth perish from the priest, And counsel from the elders,

27 The king doth become a mourner, And a prince putteth on desolation, And the hands of the people of the land are troubled, From their own way I deal with them, And with their own judgments I judge them, And they have known that I [am] Jehovah!'

   

From Swedenborg's Works

 

Sacred Scripture #35

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35. 28 shows that the Old Testament prophets represented the Lord in respect to the Word and therefore meant the teaching of the church drawn from the Word, and that because of this they were addressed as “children of humanity.” It follows from this that by the various things they suffered and endured they represented the violence done to the literal meaning of the Word by Jews. Isaiah, for example, took the sackcloth off his waist and the sandals off his feet and went naked and barefoot for three years (Isaiah 20:2-3). Similarly, Ezekiel the prophet took a barber’s razor to his head and his beard, burned a third of the hair in the middle of the city, struck a third with a sword, and scattered a third to the wind; also, he bound a few hairs in his hems and eventually threw a few into the midst of a fire and burned them (Ezekiel 5:1-4).

Since the prophets represented the Word and therefore meant the teaching of the church drawn from the Word (as just noted), and since the head means wisdom from the Word, the hair and the beard mean the outermost form of truth. It is because of this meaning that inflicting baldness on yourself was a sign of immense grief and being discovered to be bald was an immense disgrace. This and this alone is why the prophet shaved off his hair and his beard - to represent the state of the Jewish church in regard to the Word. This and this alone is why two she-bears tore apart forty-two boys who called Elisha bald (2 Kings 2:23-25)-because as just noted the prophet represented the Word, and his baldness signified the Word without an outermost meaning.

We shall see in §49 below that the Nazirites represented the Lord’s Word in its outermost forms, which is why they were commanded to let their hair grow and not to shave any of it. In Hebrew, “Nazirite” actually means “hair.” It was commanded also that the high priest was not to shave his head (Leviticus 21:10) and that the fathers of their families as well were not to do so (Leviticus 21:5).

That is why they regarded baldness as such an immense disgrace, as we can tell from the following passages:

There will be baldness upon all heads, and every beard will be cut off. (Isaiah 15:2; Jeremiah 48:37)

There will be shame upon all faces and baldness on all heads. (Ezekiel 7:18)

Every head was made bald and every shoulder hairless. (Ezekiel 29:18)

I will put sackcloth around all waists and baldness upon every head. (Amos 8:10)

Make yourself bald and cut off your hair because of your precious children; make yourself still more bald, because they have left you and gone into exile. (Micah 1:16)

Here making yourself bald and making yourself still more bald means distorting truths of the Word in its outermost forms. Once they have been distorted, as was done by Jews, the whole Word is ruined, because the outermost forms of the Word are what it rests on and what holds it up. In fact, every word in it is a base and support for the Word’s heavenly and spiritual truths.

Since a head of hair means truth in its outermost forms, in the spiritual world everyone who trivializes the Word and distorts its literal meaning looks bald; but those who respect and love it have good-looking hair. On this, see §49 below.

  
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Thanks to the Swedenborg Foundation for their permission to use this translation.