圣经文本

 

Daniel第2章

学习

   

1 And in the second year of the reign of Nebuchadnezzar, Nebuchadnezzar dreamed dreams, and his spirit was troubled, and his sleep went from him.

2 And the king commanded to call the scribes, and the magicians, and the sorcerers, and the Chaldeans, to shew the king his dreams; and they came and stood before the king.

3 And the king said unto them, I have dreamed a dream, and my spirit is troubled to know the dream.

4 And the Chaldeans spoke to the king in Aramaic, O king, live for ever! tell thy servants the dream, and we will shew the interpretation.

5 The king answered and said to the Chaldeans, The command is gone forth from me: If ye do not make known unto me the dream, and its interpretation, ye shall be cut in pieces, and your houses shall be made a dunghill.

6 But if ye shew the dream and its interpretation, ye shall receive of me gifts and rewards and great honour; therefore shew me the dream and its interpretation.

7 They answered the second time and said, Let the king tell his servants the dream, and we will shew the interpretation.

8 The king answered and said, I know of a certainty that ye would gain time, because ye see the word is gone forth from me;

9 but if ye do not make known unto me the dream, there is but one decree for you; for ye have prepared lying and corrupt words to speak before me, till the time be changed: therefore tell me the dream, and I shall know that ye can shew me its interpretation.

10 The Chaldeans answered before the king and said, There is not a man upon the earth that can shew the king's matter; therefore there is no king, however great and powerful, that hath asked such a thing of any scribe, or magician, or Chaldean.

11 For the thing that the king demandeth is extraordinary, and there is none other that can shew it before the king, except the gods, whose dwelling is not with flesh.

12 For this cause the king was irritated and very wroth, and commanded to destroy all the wise men of Babylon.

13 And the decree went forth that the wise men were to be slain; and they sought Daniel and his companions to slay them.

14 Then Daniel answered with counsel and prudence to Arioch the chief of the king's bodyguard, who had gone forth to slay the wise men of Babylon:

15 he answered and said to Arioch the king's captain, Why is the decree so rigorous from the king? Then Arioch made the thing known to Daniel.

16 And Daniel went in, and requested of the king that he would give him time, that he might shew the king the interpretation.

17 Then Daniel went to his house, and made the thing known to Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah, his companions;

18 that they would desire mercies of the God of the heavens concerning this secret; that Daniel and his companions should not perish with the rest of the wise men of Babylon.

19 Then was the secret revealed unto Daniel in a night vision. Then Daniel blessed the God of the heavens.

20 Daniel answered and said, Blessed be the name of God for ever and ever; For wisdom and might are his.

21 And it is he that changeth times and seasons; He deposeth kings, and setteth up kings; He giveth wisdom to the wise, And knowledge to them that know understanding.

22 It is he that revealeth the deep and secret things; He knoweth what is in the darkness, and the light dwelleth with him.

23 I thank thee, and I praise thee, O God of my fathers, Who hast given me wisdom and might, And hast made known unto me already what we desired of thee; For thou hast made known unto us the king's matter.

24 Therefore Daniel went in unto Arioch, whom the king had appointed to destroy the wise men of Babylon; he went and said thus unto him: Destroy not the wise men of Babylon; bring me in before the king, and I will shew unto the king the interpretation.

25 Then Arioch brought in Daniel before the king in haste, and said thus unto him: I have found a man of the sons of the captivity of Judah that will make known unto the king the interpretation.

26 The king answered and said unto Daniel, whose name was Belteshazzar, Art thou able to make known unto me the dream that I have seen, and its interpretation?

27 Daniel answered in the presence of the king and said, The secret that the king hath demanded cannot the wise men, the magicians, the scribes, the astrologers, shew unto the king;

28 but there is a God in the heavens, who revealeth secrets, and maketh known to king Nebuchadnezzar what shall be at the end of days. Thy dream, and the visions of thy head upon thy bed are these:

29 -- as for thee, O king, thy thoughts arose upon thy bed, what should come to pass hereafter; and he that revealeth secrets hath made known to thee what shall come to pass.

30 And as for me, this secret is revealed to me, not by [any] wisdom that I have more than any living, but to the intent that the interpretation should be made known to the king, and that thou mightest know the thoughts of thy heart.

31 Thou, O king, sawest, and behold, a great image. This image was mighty and its brightness excellent; it stood before thee, and its appearance was terrible.

32 This image's head was of fine gold, its breast and its arms of silver, its belly and its thighs of brass,

33 its legs of iron, its feet part of iron and part of clay.

34 Thou sawest till a stone was cut out without hands; and it smote the image upon its feet of iron and clay, and broke them to pieces.

35 Then was the iron, the clay, the brass, the silver, and the gold broken in pieces together, and they became like the chaff of the summer threshing-floors; and the wind carried them away, and no place was found for them. And the stone that smote the image became a great mountain, and filled the whole earth.

36 This is the dream; and we will tell the interpretation of it before the king.

37 Thou, O king, art a king of kings, unto whom the God of the heavens hath given the kingdom, the power, and the strength, and the glory;

38 and wheresoever the children of men, the beasts of the field, and the fowl of the heavens dwell, he hath given them into thy hand, and hath made thee ruler over them all: thou art this head of gold.

39 And after thee shall arise another kingdom inferior to thee; then another third kingdom of brass, which shall bear rule over all the earth.

40 And the fourth kingdom shall be strong as iron: forasmuch as iron breaketh in pieces and subdueth everything, and as iron that breaketh all these, so shall it break in pieces and bruise.

41 And whereas thou sawest the feet and toes, part of potter's clay, and part of iron, the kingdom shall be divided; but there shall be in it of the strength of the iron, forasmuch as thou sawest the iron mixed with miry clay.

42 And [as] the toes of the feet were part of iron and part of clay, the kingdom shall be partly strong and partly fragile.

43 And whereas thou sawest the iron mixed with miry clay, they shall mingle themselves with the seed of men; but they shall not cleave one to another, even as iron doth not mingle with clay.

44 And in the days of these kings shall the God of the heavens set up a kingdom which shall never be destroyed; and the sovereignty thereof shall not be left to another people: it shall break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms, but itself shall stand for ever.

45 Forasmuch as thou sawest that a stone was cut out of the mountain without hands, and that it broke in pieces the iron, the brass, the clay, the silver, and the gold, -- the great God hath made known to the king what shall come to pass hereafter. And the dream is certain, and the interpretation of it sure.

46 Then king Nebuchadnezzar fell on his face and worshipped Daniel, and commanded that they should offer an oblation and sweet odours unto him.

47 The king answered Daniel and said, Of a truth it is that your God is the God of gods, and the Lord of kings, and a revealer of secrets, because thou wast able to reveal this secret.

48 Then the king made Daniel great, and gave him many great gifts, and made him ruler over the whole province of Babylon, and chief of the governors over all the wise men of Babylon.

49 And Daniel requested of the king, and he appointed Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego over the administration of the province of Babylon. And Daniel was in the gate of the king.

   

来自斯威登堡的著作

 

Arcana Coelestia#2162

学习本章节

  
/10837  
  

2162. 'Wash your feet' means that they were to take on something natural so that during the state He was then passing through His perception might be improved. This becomes clear from the meaning of 'feet' as natural things, and also in a like manner from the train of thought. That arcana lie concealed here becomes clear to a certain extent from the fact that Abraham besought the three men to take a little water and wash their feet, and to relax under a tree, even though he knew that it was the Lord or Jehovah; also from the fact that if it was not so such details would not have been mentioned.

[2] That 'feet' means natural things becomes clear from the representatives in the next life, and consequently from representatives derived from these that existed among the most ancient people and so occur in the Word. Celestial and spiritual things are represented by 'the head' and the parts of the head; by 'the breast' and the parts of the breast are represented rational concepts and aspects of these; by 'the feet and the parts of the feet are represented natural things and the different kinds of these. Consequently 'the sole' and 'the heel' of the foot mean the lowest natural things, regarding which see 259, while 'a shoe' means the lowest things of all, which are filthy, regarding which see 1748.

[3] Similar things are meant by the representations in the dreams and visions in the Prophets, such as the statue seen by Nebuchadnezzar, the head of which was fine gold, the breast and arms were silver, the belly and thighs were bronze, the legs were iron, and the feet were partly iron and partly clay, Daniel 2:32-33. In this case 'the head' means celestial things, which are inmost and are 'gold', as shown in 113, 1551, 1552; 'the breast and arms' spiritual or rational things, which are 'silver', as shown in 1551; but 'the feet' means lower things, which are natural, the truths of which are meant by 'iron' and the goods by 'clay' or mud. As regards 'iron' meaning truth, see 425, 426, and 'clay' good, 1300, both of which in the present case are natural. These things come in the same order in the Lord's kingdom in heaven, and in the Church which is the Lord's kingdom on earth, and also in every individual who is a kingdom of the Lord.

[4] It is similar with the vision which Daniel himself saw, of which the following is said,

I lifted up my eyes and saw, and behold, a man clothed in linen whose loins were girded with gold of Uphaz and whose body was like tarshish, 1 and whose face was like the appearance of lightning, and whose eyes were like fiery torches, and whose arms and feet like the shine of burnished bronze. Daniel 10:5-6.

Specifically these words mean the interiors of the Word as to goods and truths. 'The arms and feet' are its interiors, which constitute the sense of the letter, for natural things occur there, since natural things are the source from which the exteriors of the Word are drawn. What further is meant by each of these parts, namely the loins, body, face, eyes, and many others in man, becomes clear from the representatives in the next life, which will in the Lord's Divine mercy be spoken of when the Grand Man - which is the Lord's heaven - and the representatives that originate in heaven but occur in the world of spirits are dealt with.

[5] That which one reads about Moses, Aaron, Nadab, Abihu, and the seventy elders seeing the God of Israel, under whose feet there was so to speak a paved work of sapphire stone, like the substance of the sky for pureness, Exodus 24:9-10, means that they saw, represented in natural things, merely the external features of the Church, and also the literal sense of the Word, in which too, as has been stated, external things are represented by natural things. And these external things are 'the feet' under which there is so to speak 'a paved work of sapphire stone, like the substance of the sky itself'. It is clear that it was the Lord whom they saw, though only in those lower or natural things, since He is called 'the God of Israel', whom all things of the Church represented and whom all things of the Word in the internal sense meant. For the Lord is presented visually in accordance with the things that are meant at the time. When, for example, in John, He was seen as a Man on a white horse, the Word was in this case meant by Him, as is explicitly stated in Revelation 19:11, 13.

[6] The living creatures seen by Ezekiel, which were cherubs, are described as regards celestial and spiritual things by their faces and wings, and also many other things. But as regards natural things they are described as follows, by their feet, a straight foot, and the soles of their feet being like the sole of a calf's foot, and sparkling like the shine of burnished bronze, Ezekiel 1:7. The reason their feet, that is, natural things, are said to have sparkled like burnished bronze is that 'bronze' means natural good, dealt with in 425, 1551. It was similar when the Lord appeared to John as the Son of Man: His eyes were like a flame of fire and His feet were like burnished bronze, Revelation 1:14-15; 2:18.

[7] That 'feet' means natural things is further evident from the following places: In John, who saw,

A mighty angel coming down out of heaven, wrapped in a cloud, and a rainbow around his head, his face was like the sun and his feet like pillars of fire. In his hand he had a little book opened, and he set his right foot on the sea and his left on the land. Revelation 10:1-2.

This angel in a similar way means the Word. The nature of the Word in the internal sense is meant by 'the rainbow around his head' and by 'his face being like the sun'; but the external sense, or sense of the letter, is meant by his 'feet'. 'The sea' is natural truths, 'the land' natural goods, from which it is clear what is meant by his setting his right foot on the sea and his left on the land.

[8] Reference is made in various places in the Word to 'a footstool', but no one knows what is meant by this in the internal sense; as in Isaiah,

Jehovah said, The heavens are My throne and the earth My footstool. Where is this house which you are going to build for Me and where is this place of My rest? Isaiah 66:1.

'The heavens' means the celestial and spiritual things, and so the inmost things, both of the Lord's kingdom in heaven and of the Lord's kingdom on earth, which is the Church. Also meant by 'the heavens' are those same things as they exist with every individual who is a kingdom of the Lord or a Church. Thus 'the heavens' also means the celestial and spiritual things regarded in themselves which are matters of love and charity and of faith that springs from these, and so means all things that belong to internal worship and similarly all things that belong to the internal sense of the Word. These things are meant by 'the heavens' and are called 'the Lord's throne', but by 'the earth' are meant all lower things corresponding to those meant by 'the heavens'. By 'the earth' lower rational and natural things are meant, which from correspondence are likewise referred to as celestial and spiritual things, such as those that exist in the lower heavens and also in the Church, and those things which belong to external worship and also those present in the literal sense of the Word. In short, all things that stem from internal things and manifest themselves in external are, being natural things, called 'the earth' and 'the Lord's footstool'. What heaven and earth mean in the internal sense of the Word, see also 82, 1733. What the new heaven and new earth mean, see 2117, 2118 (end). And that man is a miniature heaven, see 911, 978, 1900.

[9] Similarly in Jeremiah,

In His anger the Lord covers the daughter of Zion with a cloud, He has cast down from heaven to earth the splendour of Israel, and has not remembered His footstool on the day of His anger. Lamentations 2:1.

Also in David,

Exalt Jehovah our God, and bow down at His footstool. Holy is He! Psalms 99:5.

Elsewhere in the same author,

We will enter His dwelling-places, we will bow down at His footstool. Psalms 132:7.

People in the representative Church - and thus the Jews - imagined that God's house and the temple were His footstool. They did not know that by the Lord's house and the temple was meant external representative worship. What the internal features of the Church were, meant by 'heaven' or God's throne, they had no knowledge at all.

[10] In the same author,

Jehovah said to my Lord, Sit at My right hand till I make your enemies a stool for your feet. Psalms 110:1; Matthew 22:44; Mark 12:36; Luke 20:42-43.

Here 'footstool' in a similar way means natural things - both sensory impressions and factual knowledge, and man's rational ideas formed from these - which are called 'enemies' when worship is perverted by them (which is done from the literal sense of the Word). As a result worship exists solely in things that are external, and no internal worship - or rather only internal worship that is defiled - exists, concerning which see 1094, 1175, 1182. When these have became perverted and defiled in this manner they are called 'enemies'; but because, regarded in themselves, they have reference to internal worship, when this is restored, they become - both the things that belong to external worship and those that belong to the sense of the letter of the Word - 'a footstool', as stated already.

[11] In Isaiah,

The glory of Lebanon will come to you, the fir, the pine, and the box tree together, to beautify the place of My sanctuary; and I will make the place of My feet glorious. Isaiah 60:13.

This refers to the Lord's kingdom and Church, the celestial-spiritual things of which are meant by 'the glory of Lebanon', that is, cedar trees, but the celestial-natural things of it by 'the fir, the pine, and the box', as also in other places in the Word. Thus it is the external aspects of worship that are referred to when it is said that 'I will make the place of My feet glorious'; and this cannot he made glorious by the fir, the pine, and the box, but by the things meant by these.

[12] That 'feet' means these things is also clear from the representatives in the Jewish Church, for example, by the requirement that Aaron and his sons were to wash their hands and feet before entering the tabernacle, Exodus 30:19-20; 40:31-32. No one is able to see that arcana were represented by this, for what is such washing of the hands and feet but some external act which does not do anything at all if the internal is not pure and clean? Nor can the internal be made pure and clean by such a washing. But because all the forms of ritual of that Church meant internal things that are celestial and spiritual, so it was with this form; that is to say, it meant the cleanliness of external worship, which is clean when internal worship is present within it. This explains why their lavers were made of bronze, and also the large laver which was called 'the bronze sea', together with the ten smaller ones made of bronze around Solomon's temple, 1 Kings 7:23, 38. They were made of bronze because 'bronze' represented good present in external worship, which is the same as natural good. Regarding this meaning of bronze, see 425, 1551.

[13] Similarly representative was the prohibition that no man among Aaron's descendants who had a broken foot or a broken hand should draw near to offer fire-offerings to Jehovah, Leviticus 21:19, 21. 'Broken feet and hands' represented those people whose external worship was perverted.

[14] That 'feet' means natural things is also evident from various other places in the Prophets, as in these prophetical utterances in Moses,

Blessed above sons be Asher; let him be acceptable among his brothers, and dipping his foot in oil. Your shoes will be iron and bronze. Deuteronomy 33:24-25.

These words will not be understood by anybody unless he knows what the meaning of oil, foot, iron, bronze, and shoe are in the internal sense. 'Foot' is the natural; 'shoe' the still lower natural, such as that which is connected with the senses and the body, see 1748; 'oil' is the celestial, 886; 'iron' natural truth, 425, 426; and 'bronze' natural good, 425, 1551. From these places it is evident what these words embody.

[15] In Nahum,

The way of Jehovah is in storm and tempest, and the clouds are the dust of His feet. Nahum 1:3.

Here 'the dust of the feet' means the natural and bodily things with man which give rise to clouds. The same is also meant by these words in David,

Jehovah bowed the heavens and came down, and thick darkness was under His feet. Psalms 18:9.

[16] When goods and truths of faith are perverted by natural light, as people call it, it is described in the Word as the feet and hoofs of a beast which trouble waters and trample on food, as in Ezekiel,

You have come forth into the rivers, and have troubled the waters with your feet and trampled their rivers. I will destroy all its beasts from over many waters, and the foot of man will not trouble them any longer, nor will the hoofs of beast. Ezekiel 32:2, 13.

This refers to Egypt, which meant forms of knowledge, as shown in 1164, 1165, 1462. Thus by 'feet and hoofs which trouble the rivers and water' are meant facts gained from sensory and from natural things, on the basis of which people reason about the arcana of faith and do not believe anything until they grasp it by this method. This amounts to not believing at all, for the more such people go on reasoning, the less believing they are; see what is said in 128-130, 215, 232, 233, 1072, 1385. From all these quotations it is now evident that 'feet' in the Word means natural things. But what further meaning 'feet' may have is evident from the context in which the expression occurs.

脚注:

1. A Hebrew word for a particular kind of precious stone, probably a beryl.

  
/10837  
  

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