Apocalypse Revealed # 881
881. Prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. This symbolizes the New Church conjoined with the Lord through the Word.
We are told that John saw the holy city New Jerusalem coming down from God out of heaven, and now that he saw the city prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. This makes it apparent that Jerusalem means the church, which John saw first as a city and then as a virgin bride - seeing it as a city representatively, and as a virgin bride spiritually. Thus he had two images, one within the other or above the other, even as angels do when they see, hear or read in the Word about a city, perceiving it in the conception of their lower thought as a city, but in the conception of their higher thought as doctrine. And if they desire it and pray to the Lord, they see the latter as a maiden, having a beauty and apparel commensurate with the character of the church. I, too, have been given to see the church in this way.
[2] The bride's being prepared symbolizes her being attired for betrothal, and the church is made ready for betrothal and then for conjunction or marriage in no other way than by the Word; for the Word is the one and only means of conjunction or marriage, inasmuch as the Word originates from the Lord and is about the Lord, and thus embodies the Lord. It is also called a covenant therefore, and a covenant symbolizes spiritual conjunction. Moreover it was for this reason that the Word was given.
That the husband is the Lord is apparent from verses 9 and 10 in this chapter, in which the Jerusalem is called the bride, the Lamb's wife.
To be shown that the Lord is called a bridegroom and husband, and the church His bride and wife, and that their marriage is like the marriage between goodness and truth, and takes place through the Word, see no. 797 above.
It can be seen from this that Jerusalem's being prepared as a bride adorned for her husband symbolizes the New Church conjoined with the Lord through the Word.
Ezekiel 4
1
You also, son of man, take a tile, and lay it before yourself, and portray on it a city, even Jerusalem:
2
and lay siege against it, and build forts against it, and cast up a mound against it; set camps also against it, and plant battering rams against it all around.
3
Take for yourself an iron pan, and set it for a wall of iron between you and the city: and set your face toward it, and it shall be besieged, and you shall lay siege against it. This shall be a sign to the house of Israel.
4
Moreover lie on your left side, and lay the iniquity of the house of Israel on it; [according to] the number of the days that you shall lie on it, you shall bear their iniquity.
5
For I have appointed the years of their iniquity to be to you a number of days, even three hundred ninety days: so you shall bear the iniquity of the house of Israel.
6
Again, when you have accomplished these, you shall lie on your right side, and shall bear the iniquity of the house of Judah: forty days, each day for a year, have I appointed it to you.
7
You shall set your face toward the siege of Jerusalem, with your arm uncovered; and you shall prophesy against it.
8
Behold, I lay bands on you, and you shall not turn you from one side to the other, until you have accomplished the days of your siege.
9
Take for yourself also wheat, and barley, and beans, and lentils, and millet, and spelt, and put them in one vessel, and make bread of it; [according to] the number of the days that you shall lie on your side, even three hundred ninety days, you shall eat of it.
10
Your food which you shall eat shall be by weight, twenty shekels a day: from time to time you shall eat it.
11
You shall drink water by measure, the sixth part of a hin: from time to time you shall drink.
12
You shall eat it as barley cakes, and you shall bake it in their sight with dung that comes out of man.
13
Yahweh said, Even thus shall the children of Israel eat their bread unclean, among the nations where I will drive them.
14
Then I said, Ah Lord Yahweh! behold, my soul has not been polluted; for from my youth up even until now have I not eaten of that which dies of itself, or is torn of animals; neither came there abominable flesh into my mouth.
15
Then he said to me, Behold, I have given you cow's dung for man's dung, and you shall prepare your bread thereon.
16
Moreover he said to me, Son of man, behold, I will break the staff of bread in Jerusalem: and they shall eat bread by weight, and with fearfulness; and they shall drink water by measure, and in dismay:
17
that they may want bread and water, and be dismayed one with another, and pine away in their iniquity.
