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Ezekiel 35

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1 Moreover the word of Yahweh came to me, saying,

2 Son of man, set your face against Mount Seir, and prophesy against it,

3 and tell it, Thus says the Lord Yahweh: Behold, I am against you, Mount Seir, and I will stretch out my hand against you, and I will make you a desolation and an astonishment.

4 I will lay your cities waste, and you shall be desolate; and you shall know that I am Yahweh.

5 Because you have had a perpetual enmity, and have given over the children of Israel to the power of the sword in the time of their calamity, in the time of the iniquity of the end;

6 therefore, as I live, says the Lord Yahweh, I will prepare you for blood, and blood shall pursue you: since you have not hated blood, therefore blood shall pursue you.

7 Thus will I make Mount Seir an astonishment and a desolation; and I will cut off from it him who passes through and him who returns.

8 I will fill its mountains with its slain: in your hills and in your valleys and in all your watercourses shall they fall who are slain with the sword.

9 I will make you a perpetual desolation, and your cities shall not be inhabited; and you shall know that I am Yahweh.

10 Because you have said, These two nations and these two countries shall be mine, and we will possess it; whereas Yahweh was there:

11 therefore, as I live, says the Lord Yahweh, I will do according to your anger, and according to your envy which you have shown out of your hatred against them; and I will make myself known among them, when I shall judge you.

12 You shall know that I, Yahweh, have heard all your insults which you have spoken against the mountains of Israel, saying, They are laid desolate, they have been given us to devour.

13 You have magnified yourselves against me with your mouth, and have multiplied your words against me: I have heard it.

14 Thus says the Lord Yahweh: When the whole earth rejoices, I will make you desolate.

15 As you rejoiced over the inheritance of the house of Israel, because it was desolate, so will I do to you: you shall be desolate, Mount Seir, and all Edom, even all of it; and they shall know that I am Yahweh.

   

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Wickedness

  

'Wickedness' signifies evil, and 'iniquity' signifies falsities.

(Referenties: Apocalypse Explained 741)

Van Swedenborgs Werken

 

Arcana Coelestia #7850

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7850. 'And they shall eat the flesh' means enjoyment of what is good. This is clear from the meaning of 'eating' as enjoyment, dealt with immediately above in 7849; and from the meaning of 'the flesh' as the human proprium made alive by the Lord's Divine Human, thus all the celestial and spiritual good present with a person, dealt with in 3813, 6968. The fact that 'flesh' has this meaning was very well known among the ancients; but at the present day people are so ignorant of it that everyone is amazed when 'flesh' is said to mean such. If one speaks of the proprium as the spiritual entity to which 'flesh' corresponds, people have no understanding of this. If one speaks of it as the symbolic meaning of 'flesh' they do, it is true, understand that, yet their idea is entirely different from that in which the natural object corresponds to the entity it symbolizes; that is to say, they see it as something completely separate. But in actual fact the spiritual or symbolized entity to which it corresponds is linked to it as a person's sight is linked to his eye and his hearing to his ear, and as his thought, which is spiritual, is linked to the form his interiors assume, and through that form to his organs of speech, or as his will, which too is spiritual, is linked to the fibres forming his muscles with which he acts. The same kind of relationship exists with every spiritual entity and its counterpart, that is, with every entity that is symbolized and the natural object that has a correspondence with it.

[2] Who can fail to see that 'flesh' is not used by the Lord to mean flesh or 'blood' to mean blood in John,

Truly, truly, I say to you, Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you will have no life in you. Whoever eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. For My flesh is truly food, and My blood is truly drink. John 6:53-56.

Few at the present day know that 'flesh' was used to mean the Divine Good of the Lord's Divine Love, which comes from His Divine Human, and 'blood' to mean the Divine Truth emanating from His Divine Good, and also a person's reciprocation. And those who are capable of knowing this have no wish to know it. They have no wish to know it because they have no affection for truth for its own sake, only for the sake of inducements the world offers, and also because people who think on a natural level wish to understand everything on that level.

[3] These matters have been stated in order that people may know what is meant by 'eating flesh' in the Passover supper, and what is consequently meant by it in the Holy Supper, which was instituted at the Passover supper. Regarding the bread and wine, which have the same meaning as flesh and blood, in the Holy Supper, see 2165, 2177, 2187, 3464, 3478, 3735, 3813, 4211, 4217, 4735, 4976, 5915. The fact that 'flesh' is not flesh in the spiritual sense of the Word is, in addition to other places, plainly evident from the following in John,

Come and gather yourselves to the supper of the great God, so that you may eat [the flesh of kings, and] the flesh of captains, and the flesh of mighty men, and the flesh of horses and those seated on them, and the flesh of all free men and slaves, both small and great. Revelation 19:17-18.

'The flesh', as it is used here, means varying kinds of good.

  
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Thanks to the Swedenborg Society for the permission to use this translation.