1846. And these will afflict them means that their trials would be heavy. This can be seen from the symbolism of afflicting or affliction as persecution and so as putting a person to the test. Affliction means nothing else in the Lord's Word, as in Isaiah:

I will purge you, and not with silver; I will choose you in the crucible of affliction. (Isaiah 48:10)

Affliction stands for a time of trial. In Moses:

You shall remember all the path by which Jehovah your God has led you these forty years in the wilderness, in order to afflict you and to test you. Jehovah has been the one feeding you manna in the wilderness — which your ancestors did not recognize — in order to afflict you and in order to test you, to do good to you in the end. (Deuteronomy 8:2, 16)

Afflicting explicitly stands for testing.

[2] In the same author:

... when the Egyptians did evil to us and afflicted us and laid hard slavery on us, and we cried out to Jehovah, God of our ancestors, and Jehovah listened to our voice and saw our affliction and our labor and our oppression. (Deuteronomy 26:6-7)

This passage contains the same themes as the present verse — the enslavement and affliction of Abram's descendants, which likewise symbolized the trials of the faithful, as did those descendants' hardships in the wilderness. These troubles also represented the Lord's trials,

[3] as in Isaiah:

He was despised, a man in pain, and we therefore hid our faces from him, so to speak; he was despised, and we did not value him. Nevertheless our sicknesses he bore and our pain he shouldered, but we counted him beaten, struck by God, and afflicted. (Isaiah 53:3-4)

These things symbolize the Lord's trials. The idea that he bore our sicknesses and shouldered our pain does not mean that the faithful would never face terrible challenges, or that he bore our sins by deflecting them onto himself. What it means is that he overcame the hells through the struggles and victories of his trials and that as a result he alone, in his human capacity, would bear the weight of the trials that religious people undergo.

[4] The Lord himself calls times of trial afflictions. In Mark:

Those who are sown on stony places, when they hear the message, do not have any root in themselves but are fickle. Later, when affliction and persecution arise because of the message, they immediately stumble. (Mark 4:16-17)

Affliction stands explicitly for trials here. Not having any root in themselves is not having charity, since faith is rooted in charity. People who have no such root succumb in times of trial. In John:

In the world you will have affliction, but rest assured; I have overcome the world. (John 16:33)

The affliction stands for trials.

[5] In Matthew:

Nation will be roused against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. All these things will be the beginning of woes; then they will hand you over to affliction. Then there will be great affliction such as there has not been from the beginning of the world. Immediately after the affliction of those days, the sun will go dark. (Matthew 24:7-8, 9, 21, 29)

This concerns the close of the age, or the final days of the church. The affliction stands for external and internal trials. External trials are persecution by the world; internal trials are persecution by the Devil. Nation against nation and kingdom against kingdom symbolize absence of charity, as does the fact that the sun (the Lord; love and charity) will go dark.