"To eat sufficiently, and for durable clothing": The Merchandise of Tyre

 Isaiah 23:17-18 - King James Version (KJV)

<17> And it shall come to pass after the end of seventy years, that the Lord will visit Tyre, and she shall turn to her hire, and shall commit fornication with all the kingdoms of the world upon the face of the earth. <18> And her merchandise and her hire shall be holiness to the Lord: it shall not be treasured nor laid up; for her merchandise shall be for them that dwell before the Lord, to eat sufficiently, and for durable clothing.

Someone who has been instructed in the inner meaning or glory of the outer meaning or cloud of the Word of God will immediately notice two things: chiastic structures and passing the baton symbolism. A notable chiastic structure in this case involves "to eat sufficiently", which refers to the goods of the Church and the supply of knowledge pertaining to them (and not only that but to procuring and teaching these for the right reasons); and "for durable clothing", which refers to the truths of the Church and the supply of spiritual knowledge. For eating is ever related to good in the will or evil; and raiment is ever related to truth in the understanding or its absence. 

A second thing to notice is the passing the baton symbolism in which a Tyre which had been teaching good and truth for corrupt reasons or outright teaching sin and error in place of good and truth entirely becomes a Tyre which teaches the right practices and practice-supportive concepts and facts of a spiritual nature for the right reasons. In other words, Tyre in the negative sense becomes reversed as to its polarity in order to encode the death of one merchant city which has become an anti-Church in specific relation to its procuring and teaching the good and the true; and the birth of another merchant city which has become a Church in the same specific sense but in the upright position. 

The number 7 here is also seen in the negative or tails position; in which it has much the same significance as filling up the cup of iniquity or the seventy years of Babylonian captivity: it is a complete period in which the root and branch of the Church are fully burnt up in the course of its becoming the anti-church, also known as consummation. Until the cup is full, which entails a period of arrival of consummation, God does not orchestrate a passing of the baton from an Old Church or old bottle with old wine to a New Church or new bottle with new wine. That is why He writes this in:

Genesis 15:16 - King James Version (KJV)

<16> But in the fourth generation they shall come hither again: for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet full.

It has to become full before God visits His people, establishing a New Church. The Lord's Coming or visit to the Jewish Church in the end times of that Church occurred precisely at the moment when it had nothing more of the good and true of the Church which facilitate the regeneration process and was now worse than no Church at all. "Rise O God and work! For they have made void all thy law." God is very big on things arriving at their fullness or consummation before intervening so hugely as to declare an entire Church a mere inversion of its former honor and glory. At that point the ordinary minutiae of divine Providence no longer suffices and intervention on an epic scale occurs.

The knowledge about proper practice and the understandings which underpin proper practice here are for sufficient food -- for the purification of your will; and for durable clothing -- for the purification of your understanding. There is no other proper purpose to buying and selling them personally; let alone to disseminating them to others. Those who buy and sell for the wrong reasons are the rich man Dives, whose spiritual riches accompany an obvious lack of compassion for poor, scabbed Lazarus; and those whom the Lord represents as Lazarus -- the New Church to be established among the Gentiles, people outside the Church that has become an anti-church or Old Church or whore of Babylon or Tyre gone bad -- are to be instructed by God personally in order that they may perform the now defunct teaching functions of the now worthless whore. 

With all of this in mind, consider the number 7 in the same spiritual context but in the upright position, which occurs quite clearly here:

Isaiah 30:26 - King James Version (KJV)

<26> Moreover the light of the moon shall be as the light of the sun, and the light of the sun shall be sevenfold, as the light of seven days, in the day that the Lord bindeth up the breach of his people, and healeth the stroke of their wound.

As we have frequently seen, the 7 days of Creation involve the regeneration of a human being from the spiritual birth of beginning to believe -- the dawn (Let there be spiritual enlightenment not mere photons) -- to the fullness thereof according to the rules of order; and this occurs with individuals and groups. Here the sun's shining sevenfold and the moon's shining as the sun involves the setting up a New Church which is the mirror opposite of the 7 stages of decline even unto fullness or consummation of the Old Church. The same is meant in reverse by the seven devils which a man takes unto himself so that his last state is worse even than his first mentioned by the Lord. 

Look for these chiastic structures, these upright and reversed positions of images and pairs, these marriages and adulteries. And look for the passing of the baton from a dying Old Church to a living New Church. For you will reliably find these indicators throughout the Word of God and in the two witnesses that stand by the Lord of the whole earth, the container of love which is your will and the container of wisdom which is your understanding; if so be that these witness for and not against you forever.