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Isaiah 2

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1 THE word that Isaias the son of Amos saw, concerning Juda and Jerusalem.

2 And in the last days the mountain of the house of the Lord shall be prepared on the top of mountains, and it shall be exalted above the hills, and all nations shall flow unto it.

3 And many people shall go, and say: Come and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, and to the house of the God of Jacob, and he will teach us his ways, and we will walk in his paths: for the law shall come forth from Sion, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.

4 And he shall judge the Gentiles, and rebuke many people: and they shall turn their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into sickles: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they be exercised any more to war.

5 O house of Jacob, come ye, and let us walk in the light of the Lord.

6 For thou hast cast off thy people, the house of Jacob: because they are filled as in times past, and have had soothsayers as the Philistines, and have adhered to strange children.

7 Their land is filled with silver and gold: and there is no end of their treasures.

8 And their land is filled with horses: and their chariots are innumerable. Their land also is full of idols: they have adored the work of their own hands, which their own fingers have made.

9 And man hath bowed himself down, and man hath been debased: therefore forgive them not.

10 Enter thou into the rock, and hide thee in the pit from the face of the fear of the Lord, and from the glory of his majesty.

11 The lofty eyes of man are humbled, and the haughtiness of men shall be made to stoop: and the Lord alone shall be exalted in that day.

12 Because the day of the Lord of hosts shall be upon every one that is proud and highminded, and upon every one that is arrogant, and he shall be humbled.

13 And upon all the tall and lofty cedars of Libanus, and upon all the oaks of Basan.

14 And upon all the high mountains, and upon all the elevated hills.

15 And upon every high tower, and every fenced wall.

16 And upon all the ships of Tharsis, and upon all that is fair to behold.

17 And the loftiness of men shall be bowed down, and the haughtiness of men shall be humbled, and the Lord alone shall be exalted in that day.

18 And idols shall be utterly destroyed.

19 And they shall go into the holes of rocks, and into the caves of the earth from the face of the fear of the Lord, and from the glory of his majesty, when he shall rise up to strike the earth.

20 In that day a man shall cast away his idols of silver, and his idols of gold, which he had made for himself to adore, moles and bats.

21 And he shall go into the clefts of rocks, and into the holes of stones from the face of the fear of the Lord, and from the glory of his majesty, when he shall rise up to strike the earth.

22 Cease ye therefore from the man, whose breath is in his nostrils, for he is reputed high.

   

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Apocalypse Revealed #378

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378. "And have washed their robes." This symbolically means, who have cleansed their religious beliefs of the evils accompanying falsity.

Washing in the Word symbolizes a cleansing oneself of evils and falsities, and robes symbolize general truths (no. 328). General truths are concepts of goodness and truth drawn from the literal sense of the Word, in accordance with which these people have lived, so that they are religious beliefs. And because every matter of religion has relation to goodness and truth, therefore robes are mentioned twice - "have washed their robes" and "have made their robes white."

Robes or religious beliefs are cleansed only in the case of people who fight against evils and so reject falsities, who thus undergo temptations or trials, which are symbolically meant by "the great tribulation" (no. 377).

That to be washed means, symbolically, to be cleansed of evils and falsities, and so to be reformed and regenerated, can be seen from the following passages:

When the Lord has washed away the filth of the daughters of Zion, and rinsed away the blood of Jerusalem... by the spirit of judgment and by the spirit of purification... (Isaiah 4:4)

Wash yourselves, make yourselves clean; put away the evil of your doings from My eyes. Cease to do evil... (Isaiah 1:16)

Wash your heart of its wickedness, O Jerusalem, that you may be saved. (Jeremiah 4:14)

Wash me clean of my iniquity..., and I shall be whiter than snow. (Psalms 51:2, 7)

...if you wash yourself with soda, and use much soap, your iniquity will still retain its spots. (Jeremiah 2:22)

If I wash myself with melted snow, and cleanse my hands with soap..., yet... my own clothes will abhor me. (Job 9:30-31)

Who... has washed his clothing in wine, and his vesture in the blood of grapes. (Genesis 49:11)

This is said of the celestial church, from which come people prompted by love toward the Lord, and in the highest sense it is said of the Lord Himself. Wine and the blood of grapes are spiritual and celestial Divine truth.

I washed you with water, and rinsed off your blood from upon you... (Ezekiel 16:9)

This is said of Jerusalem. Water is truth, and blood is an adulteration of truth.

[2] It can be seen from this what washing in the Israelite Church represented and thus symbolized. As, for example, that Aaron was to wash himself before he put on the vestments of his ministry (Leviticus 16:4, 24), and before he approached the altar to minister (Exodus 30:18-21; 40:30-31).

[3] It can be seen from this that among the children of Israel washing represented a spiritual washing, which is a cleansing from evils and falsities, and thus reformation and regeneration.

It is apparent also from the aforesaid what baptism by John in the Jordan symbolized (Matthew 3, Mark 1:4-13), and what the symbolic meaning of the following words by John regarding the Lord is, that He baptized with the Holy Spirit and with fire (Luke 3:16, John 1:33), and regarding himself, that he baptized with water (John 1:26). The meaning is that the Lord washes or purifies a person by Divine truth and Divine goodness, and that John by his baptism represented this. For the Holy Spirit is Divine truth, the fire is Divine goodness, and the water is representative of these. For water symbolizes the truth in the Word, which becomes goodness by one's living in accordance with it (no. 50).

  
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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.