Prophets and Psalms: 1-50

This is an annotated index or summary commentary on the book of Isaiah by Emanuel Swedenborg, the 18th-century Swedish mystic and theologian, rendered here in a 1900 English translation. Rather than literary or historical analysis, Swedenborg presents Isaiah as a systematic spiritual allegory, reducing each passage to a coded thematic label drawn from his own theological vocabulary. The dominant argument running through all twenty-seven chapters covered is that the existing church has been progressively "vastated" — hollowed out by the falsification of the Word, self-derived reasoning, and the substitution of mere doctrinal knowledge for genuine spiritual good and truth. Against this backdrop of total ecclesial collapse, Swedenborg reads Isaiah's prophetic passages as foretelling the Coming of the Lord to judge and destroy the corrupt church, cast the evil into hell, and establish an entirely new church with those outside or beyond the old one. What is most distinctive is Swedenborg's decoding of all named nations and peoples (Babylon, Egypt, Tyre, Moab, Damascus, etc.) not as historical entities but as specific spiritual diseases — each representing a different mode of perverting truth, from pride of intellect to empty ritualism to willful ignorance. The work will interest readers already familiar with Swedenborg's theological system, but it presupposes that framework entirely and functions less as biblical commentary than as a highly compressed cross-reference guide to his broader doctrinal writings.

Prophets and Psalms: 1-50

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