Arcana Coelestia # 4937
4937. Spirits from hell sometimes use delusion to produce a shoulder with which they cause force to be repelled; it cannot even pass by them. But all this is solely for the protection of those employing that kind of delusion; for they know that in the spiritual world the shoulder corresponds to all power. In the Word too 'the shoulder' means all power, as is evident in the following places,
You have broken the yoke of his burden, and the rod of his shoulder. Isaiah 9:4.
You push with side and with shoulder, and butt with your horns. Ezekiel 34:21.
You will tear for them every shoulder. Ezekiel 29:6-7.
That they may serve Jehovah with one shoulder. Zephaniah 3:9.
To us a Boy is born, and the government will be upon His shoulder. Isaiah 9:6.
I will place the key of the house of David on His shoulder. Isaiah 22:22.
The New Jerusalem and its Heavenly Teachings # 201
201. The Lord's spiritual crises. Beyond all others, the Lord suffered the fiercest, most severe spiritual crises; they are barely touched on in the literal sense of the Word but are described extensively in its inner meaning: 1663, 1668, 1787, 2776, 2786, 2795, 2816, 9528. The Lord fought out of his divine love for the whole human race: 1690, 1691, 1812, 1813, 1820. The Lord's love was a love for the salvation of the human race: 1820. The Lord fought from his own power: 1692, 1813, 9937. Through spiritual crises and victories from his own power, the Lord alone became righteousness and merit: 1813, 2025, 2026, 2027, 9715, 9809, 10178. Through crises of the spirit, the Lord united his divine nature, which was within him from conception, to his human nature, and made this latter divine, just as he makes us spiritual through our crises of the spirit: 1725, 1729, 1733, 1737, 3318, 3381, 3382, 4286. The Lord's spiritual crises included despair at the end: 1787. Through the spiritual crises he allowed himself to undergo, the Lord gained control over the hells and brought everything there and in the heavens into proper order; and at the same time he glorified his human nature: 1737, 4287, 9528, 9715, 9937. The Lord alone fought against all the hells: 8273. This is why he allowed himself to undergo spiritual crises: 2816, 4295.
The Lord's divine nature could not have undergone spiritual crises, because the hells cannot attack anything divine. That is why the Lord took on a human nature from his mother, a nature that can undergo spiritual crises: 1414, 1444, 1573, 5041, 5157, 7193, 9315. Through his spiritual crises and victories he drove out everything he had inherited from his mother and divested himself of the human nature he had received from her, even to the point that he was no longer her son: 2159, 2574, 2649, 3036, 10830. Jehovah, 1 who was in him from conception, nevertheless seemed to be absent during his spiritual crises: 1815. This was his state of being humbled: 2 1785, 1999, 2159, 6866. His last spiritual crisis and final victory was in Gethsemane and on the cross, through which he completely overcame the hells and made his human nature divine: 2776, 2813, 2814, 10655, 10659, 10828.
Not eating bread and not drinking water for forty days [Exodus 34:28; Deuteronomy 9:9] means an entire state of spiritual crisis: 10686. Forty years, forty months, or forty days means a full state of spiritual crisis from beginning to end, and this state is meant by the forty-day duration of the Flood [Genesis 7:4, 17], by Moses' sojourn on Mount Sinai for forty days [Exodus 24:18; 34:28], by the Israelites' sojourn in the wilderness for forty years, 3 and by the forty-day-long crisis the Lord experienced in the wilderness [Matthew 4:2; Mark 1:13; Luke 4:2]: 730, 862, 2272, 2273, 8098.
Mga talababa:
1. Following a Christian practice of his times, Swedenborg used the name "Jehovah" as a rendering of the tetragrammaton, יָהוֶה, "YHVH" (or "YHWH"), the four-letter name of God in the Hebrew Scriptures. In earliest times, Hebrew was written only with consonants; a system for indicating vowels was not perfected until the eighth century of the Common Era, and even in many modern Hebrew texts, vowels are not marked. The current scholarly reconstruction of the original pronunciation of the name is "Yahweh": see Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament, under "YHWH. " A strict understanding of the Second Commandment, "You are not to take the name of YHVH your God in vain" (Exodus 20:7), led pious Jews to avoid pronouncing the name aloud; instead the word y"nod]a ('ăḏōnāi, literally meaning "my lord") was read. To indicate this, vowels similar to those in Adonai were added to YHVH, creating the form Jehovah. Some modern English Bibles use the name "Jehovah," while others render the term as "LORD," so capitalized; "Lord," in capital and lowercase; "Yahweh"; "ADONAI"; or even "God. " [GFD, RS]
2. Swedenborg is here referring to the Christian theological concept denoted by the Latin word humiliatio, here translated "his state of being humbled. " The term denoted the sufferings of Jesus; or even his simply being born, living in the mortal world, and dying; or his denying himself the prerogatives of his own divinity while on earth. The term is often contrasted with Christ's exaltatio, his being raised up. See, for example,Philippians 2:5-11. [SS]
3. For statements about the Israelites' forty-year sojourn in the wilderness, see, for example, Numbers 14:33; Deuteronomy 2:7. [GFD]
