To strike or smite, when used in the Bible, means to attack, harm or destroy, and is usually in reference to an attack on someone's knowledge and intellect. This is actually true both when evil people strike good people, trying to destroy their understanding of spiritual things, and when the Lord is pictured as striking people (with plagues in Egypt, for example), which most often represents the dulling of the intellect and destruction of knowledge in evil people to prevent them from doing spiritual harm to others.

(Odkazy: Apocalypse Revealed 498; Arcana Coelestia 1487, 6758, 6765, 7330, 7871, 9007, 9034, 9081, 9126, 10510)

498. And to strike the earth with every plague, as often as they desire. This symbolically means that people who wish to destroy these two essential elements of the New Church propel themselves into evils and falsities of every kind, as often as, and in the measure that, they do so.

The earth symbolizes the church (no. 285), and a plague symbolizes evil and falsity (no. 456). Thus to strike the earth with every plague means, symbolically, to ruin the church with evils and falsities of every kind.

Still, as in the case of earlier interpretations, this has to be understood, namely, that when people wish to strike these two essential elements of the New Church with plague, that is, when they wish to destroy them, which they are moved by evil to do by means of falsities, they propel themselves into evils and falsities of every kind. Moreover, because the natural sense is turned around when it becomes spiritual, therefore this statement, too, "as often as they desire," is similarly changed into "as often as and in the measure that they do." The reason is that to the extent someone destroys these two essential elements, to the same extent he destroys the truths of the Word, and to the extent he destroys the truths of the Word, to the same extent he propels himself into evils and falsities. For these two essential elements are truths of the Word, as may be clearly seen from two books containing the doctrine of the New Jerusalem, one being The Doctrine of the New Jerusalem Regarding the Lord, and the other titled The Doctrine of Life in Accordance With the Precepts of the Decalogue.

This statement, that the two witnesses have the power to strike the earth with every plague as often as they desire, is similar to many others in the Word which attribute to Jehovah, that is, to the Lord, His striking people with a plague, and its being His will to do so, even though it is to be understood that He does not strike anyone, and that it is not His will to do so. For example, in Zechariah:

This shall be the plague with which Jehovah will strike all the people who fight against Jerusalem. (Zechariah 14:12ff.)

And in Jeremiah:

...I have stricken you with the plague of an enemy, with the chastisement of a tyrant, for the multitude of your iniquities... (Jeremiah 30:14)

And so on in many places elsewhere. See also no. 494 above.