How to use Ecclesiasticus and Wisdom of Solomon in preaching

"Go thy way, eat thy bread with joy, and drink thy wine with a merry heart; for God now accepteth thy works" (Ecclesiastes 9:7).

One will touch on a number of subjects today, more of a variety platter, since this is Friday. This particular extract has been brought to your attention because it essentially restates the Sabbath day rest of marriage conjunction with which we closed yesterday*.

*[All right, one has already mentioned that the angels do not marry and are not given in marriage because this is a human institution involving property, kids, and other things which simply do not apply in Heaven; lest this seem sophistry, consider the scenario that the Sadducees laid out for Him! For they evidently cared about the woman as PROPERTY of one or another of the men, the episode as a whole having been partly inspired by the apocryphal book of Tobit. So it is indeed true in this sense. But there is another and more special sense which everyone should understand.

If you overcome in the 6 days of spiritual combat between good and evil, where you bake the manna, and between truth and falsity, where you seethe (boil) the manna, then you arrive at the Sabbath day rest of marriage with God: the conjunction of good and truth. The angels are not in this sense marrying and given in marriage because they would not be angels at all if they had not arrived at the nucleus of this marriage of righteousness and understanding HERE, on this Earth!]

If you eat your bread with joy, then this is the good part of the double portion that the Israelites were to gather for the 7th day; and if you drink your wine with a merry heart, then this is the true part of the same. The verse which succeeds it restates the concept in other terms: for garments are spiritual truths, and these are to be kept white by living a clean life; and as for heads, what are intelligence and knowledge without the oil or ointment of love trickling down them?

It is precisely the 7th day rest of Sabbath marriage or conjunction which corresponds directly to God's accepting your works and regarding them as internally good rather than evil; remember, before a certain point in your spiritual progress and fruitfulness the deeds that you do may appear to be good, may even be good for those who benefit from them, and yet are still internally evil! And thus you still want to labor in the 6 days of combat, that your good works may be internally good and that God may accept them.

It does to pause here and note that Ecclesiastes is not a book of the Word of God but rather a supplementary text meant to be of assistance in explaining, understanding, and practicing that Word.

This has here been done, and this is an example of how one properly uses supplementary and deuterocanonical texts: to illustrate the Heavenly marriage, elucidate the Word, and the like.

Now, yesterday one mentioned in passing that the book of Tobit partly inspired the question which the Sadducees thought so very clever to ask the Lord; whereupon He overturned their subtlety and taught them and us a valuable message.

The book of Tobit is in itself mostly useless except for the purpose to which one just put it; but that is not the case of two specific, deuterocanonical works from the Apocrypha, and one would here note how one uses these -- or begins to use these -- to explain the doctrine of the Church to the profit of yourself and those who will hear you.

The works one has in mind are Wisdom of Solomon and Ecclesiasticus. For instance, we have already seen from Ecclesiastes how the head is to want (lack for, be in need of) no oil or ointment; the lamp is not to lack oil, the spiritual information is not to lack love but be indwelt by it.

So let us see this concept supported by Wisdom herself... "She [Wisdom[ entered into the soul of the servant of the Lord, and withstood dreadful kings in wonders and signs" (Wisdom 10:16). This is possibly one of the most valuable verses in all of the Apocrypha for explaining the inner meaning of 'king' as spiritual truth; for it is very obvious that very few kings will fit inside of your soul. To be very clear, these very "dreadful kings" were those whom Jesus confronted in the wilderness when being burned with evil passions and flooded with distorted thoughts.

So how does this support what one already quoted from Ecclesiastes? Let us look at the second verse from our selection again: 

Ecclesiastes 9:8 - King James Version (KJV)

<8> Let thy garments be always white; and let thy head lack no ointment.

As an attentive reader of the Word knows, the heads of kings were anointed by oil! And so were pillars and rocks and similar. The reason for all of this lies in the same necessity of truth being supported by and indwelt by love often taught to you here.

Every time someone or something gets anointed by oil or ointment in the Word of God this has the same meaning predictably and reliably; as with all the inner meanings, once you adjust them in relation to particular contexts which modify their contents.

So to continue, you use the verse from Wisdom to teach people the inner meaning of 'king' as spiritual truth; and you do this in part because people often get the quite mistaken notion that Swedenborg made all of these things up! when yet they were true before the world was made.

Luke 24:27 - King James Version (KJV)

<27> And beginning at Moses and all the prophets, he expounded unto them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself.

It is just like here: all these things lay hidden in the Word, yet the Israelite representative of a Church -- that possie of homeless, low-quality people on whose backs God put sandwich boards with truths they did not understand and would have loathed for not aggrandizing themselves -- did not know about them.

Just as the Israelite homeless people with sandwich boards on their backs everywhere they wandered did not know what wealth lay within the Word, so do the Christians not know what wealth lies within the 2nd Testament.

Going back to the original point, the meaning of 'king' did not originate with Swedenborg but has always meant spiritual truths; with kings combatting always indicating truth fighting with falsehood everywhere it gets mentioned in the Word of God.

So one has amply demonstrated the utility of Wisdom when preaching the inner meanings of the Church to outsiders. Let us consider some other Apocryphal verses in the same vein:

"Good is set against evil, and life against death: so is the godly against the sinner, and the sinner against the godly. So look upon all the works of the most High; and there are two and two, one against another." -- Ecclesiasticus 33:14-15 "Let reason go before every enterprise, and counsel before every action." -- Ecclesiasticus 37:16

One should here note that the Israelite Church mostly did not know about inner meanings; but there are now and again more knowing people. The same is true of the Christians: they understand very little about the Heavenly marriages and infernal adulteries with which God wrote the Word on His typewriter with ideal forms instead of letters; but Paul, Peter, James, and John had to some extent to know more, and that is why as we have seen Paul was given to explicitly speak of Jesus coming with great power and glory to the INNER HUMAN in Ephesians ch.3, his chapter on how the loving may understand prophecy. 

Obviously this selection from Ecclesiasticus is designed to help students of the Word to understand the chiastic structures which are the Heavenly marriages and infernal fornications-and-adulteries.

Students aware of that verse will the more readily understand, for instance, Daniel 12:10:

Daniel 12:10 - King James Version (KJV)

<10> Many shall be purified, and made white, and tried; but the wicked shall do wickedly: and none of the wicked shall understand; but the wise shall understand.

And they will the more readily understand Psalms 111:10:

Psalm 111:10 - King James Version (KJV)

<10> The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom: a good understanding have all they that do his commandments: his praise endureth for ever.

"A good understanding have all they that do his commandments". With these verses side by side, the basic rubric whereby those who do good understand more and those who do evil understand less becomes crystal clear; and the more knowingly you employ these resources, the more you may enrich people's understandings long after they have left you behind in a cloud of dust. 

For all the Heavenly marriages and infernal adulteries are marriages or adulteries of HEART and MIND, will and understanding; and it is crystal clear in the verse drawn from Ecclesiasticus. Let us see it again:

"Let reason go before every enterprise, and counsel before every action." -- Ecclesiasticus 37:16

Aha! Let understanding go before every deed times two! And the more you look for this relationship, the more you will find it in the Word and in your deeds, your thoughts, and your intentions. The whole universe functions like this; and this is the ladder of the Lord. 

Speaking of the ladder of the Lord... "He hath set fire and water before thee: stretch forth thy hand unto whether thou wilt" (Ecclesiasticus 15:16).

He hath set fire and fire, love and hate, before thee. He hath set water and water, truth and falsehood, before thee: stretch forth thy intentions and thy deeds unto whether thou wilt. 

Allow me now to again quote that wonderful poem of Mr. Eliot's so that the choice of fire and fire receives appropriate accompaniment. I hope to expand upon the utility of poetry to teaching the doctrines of the Church in time, but now I cannot help but quote him again:

"The dove descending breaks the air

With flame of incandescent terror

Of which the tongues declare

The one discharge from sin and error.

The only hope, or else despair

Lies in the choice of pyre or pyre-

To be redeemed from fire by fire" (T.S. Eliot).

To be redeemed from hate by love, from love of self and the world by love of God and the neighbor.

Now then. There are many other verses which one might have chosen from the Apocryphal texts; but in order not to be wearisome -- for it is a delight to share, and it should be a delight to imbibe -- one will only mention a few more.

"He that feareth the Lord will do good: and he that hath the knowledge of the law shall obtain her [Wisdom]" (Ecclesiasticus 15:1).

We have recently and anew covered how the fear of the Lord is not trembling in dread of punishment -- which is what the wicked do while they foolishly ascribe wrath to Lambs -- but rather the fear of not being loving enough, good enough, aligned enough with Love and Order in person, Jesus Christ.

Let this then serve as further grist for that mill.

And now let us have one more: "If thou love to hear, thou shalt receive understanding: and if thou bow thine ear, thou shalt be wise" (Ecclesiasticus 7:33).

Here it should be noted that the inner meaning of "hear" in the Word involves attentiveness unto obedience, unto alignment with the order of the universe; it is the 'hearing' of "hearing and doing the Word".

So here we again have being obedient to the commandments of God and thence having more understanding. May these considerations be of use to you in promulgating the doctrines of the Church of God on Earth; and may they be a mere scratching of the surface of all the use which may be made of the supplementary and deuterocanonical works adjoined to the Word. Amen.

Appendix: "That a "harlot" denotes falsity, is because marriage represents the heavenly marriage, which is of good and truth, the husband representing good, and the wife truth; and hence sons represent truths, and daughters goods; and son-in-law and daughter-in-law, father-in-law and mother-in-law, and the several relationships, according to their degrees, represent those things which are of the heavenly marriage. Therefore adulteries and harlotries, being opposite, signify evil and falsity; and they are opposite in reality, for those who spend their lives in adultery and harlotry care nothing for good and truth. The reason is, that genuine conjugial love descends from the heavenly marriage, that is, from the marriage of good and truth; but adulteries and harlotries arise from the conjunction of evil and falsity, which is from hell" (Arcana Coelestia 4865).

*Note: man is truth and woman is good; so that the affection for truth of the woman becomes affection for the truth in the man whom she marries. But the husband is as above good and the wife truth. Why this switcheroo?? Well, consider what you do when you tie up the laces of your boots... Is not the shoe string first on one side and then on the other? That is the most common way that this sort of thing occurs in natural life, as also it occurs in spiritual life. But there are also even amazing ways in natural and spiritual life that this occurs: for instance, there is a central body in our solar system, the Sun, which emits light; and a central body in our galaxy, Saggitarius A Star, which absorbs it. So you will find this pattern in nature as in supernature, and one scarcely begins to understand it; but perhaps you will enjoy it and look for this pattern elsewhere.

Enjoy your Fridays and weekends, with your enjoyment being the better for your temperance amid it.