Apocalypse Revealed#323
323. With sword, with famine, with death, and by the beasts of the earth. This symbolically means, by doctrinal falsities, by evil practices, by self-love, and by lusts.
To be shown that a sword symbolizes truths fighting against evils and falsities and destroying them, and in an opposite sense, falsity fighting against goods and truths and destroying them, see nos. 52, 108, 117 above. Accordingly, because the subject is the destruction of all good in the church, a sword here symbolizes doctrinal falsities.
That a famine symbolizes evil practices - this we will confirm below.
Death symbolizes a person's self-love because death symbolizes the extinction of spiritual life, and thus natural life divorced from any spiritual life, as shown in no. 321 above, and this life is the life of a person's self-love; for this life causes a person to love nothing but himself and the world, and so to love also evils of every kind, evils which, because of that life's love, are delightful to him.
That beasts of the earth symbolize lusts arising from the love will be seen in no. 567 below.
Here we will say something about the symbolic meaning of famine. A famine symbolizes the privation and rejection of concepts of truth and goodness, springing from evil practices. It symbolizes as well an ignorance of concepts of truth and goodness, owing to an absence of these in the church. And it symbolizes also a desire to know and understand them.
[2] I. That a famine symbolizes the privation and rejection of concepts of truth and goodness, springing from evil practices, and thus symbolizes evil practices, can be seen from the following passages:
They shall be consumed by the sword and by famine, so that their corpses become food for the birds of heaven and for the beasts of the earth. (Jeremiah 16:4)
These two things shall befall you...: devastation and ruin, and famine and sword... (Isaiah 51:19)
Behold, I am visiting punishment upon them. The young men shall die by the sword; their sons and their daughters shall die by famine. (Jeremiah 11:22)
...deliver up her children to famine, and cause them to flow down upon the hands of the sword..., that their men may be put to death... (Jeremiah 18:21)
...I will send on them the sword, famine, and pestilence, and will make them like rough figs that cannot be eaten, they are so bad. And I will pursue them with the sword, with famine, and with pestilence. (Jeremiah 29:17-18)
I will send upon them the sword, famine, and pestilence, till they are consumed from the land... (Jeremiah 24:10)
...I proclaim liberty to you..., to the sword, to pestilence, and famine! And I will deliver you for turmoil to all nations. (Jeremiah 34:17)
...because you have defiled My sanctuary..., a third of you shall die of pestilence and be consumed with famine...; and a third shall fall by the sword... When I send against them the evil arrows of famine, which shall be for destruction... (Ezekiel 5:11-12, 16-17)
The sword is outside, and the pestilence and famine within. (Ezekiel 7:15)
...for all the evil abominations... they shall fall by the sword, by famine, and by pestilence. (Ezekiel 6:11-12)
...I will send My four evil judgments on Jerusalem - the sword, famine and wild beast, and pestilence - to cut off man and beast from it. (Ezekiel 14:13, 15, 21)
And so, too, elsewhere, as in Jeremiah 14:12-13, 15-16; 42:13-14, 16-18, 22; 44:12-13, 27, Mark 13:8, Luke 21:11. Sword, famine, pestilence and beasts in these places have similar symbolic meanings to those of the sword, famine, death, and beasts of the earth in the present verse. For the Word has a spiritual meaning in it in every single constituent, in which a sword means the destruction of spiritual life by falsities, in which famine means the destruction of spiritual life by evils, in which a beast of the earth means the destruction of spiritual life by the lusts accompanying falsity and evil, and in which pestilence and death means a complete destruction and thus damnation.
[3] II. That famine, or hunger, symbolizes an ignorance of concepts of truth and goodness, owing to an absence of these in the church, is clear as well from various passages in the Word, as in Isaiah 5:13; 8:19-22, Lamentations 2:19; 5:8-10, Amos 8:11-14, Job 5:17, 20, and elsewhere.
III. That famine or hunger symbolizes a desire to know and understand the church's truths and goods is apparent from the following: Isaiah 8:21; 32:6; 49:10; 58:6-7; Matthew 5:6; 25:35, 37, 44; Luke 1:53; John 6:35; and elsewhere.
Ezekiel第4章
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.
