4839. And that which he did was evil in the eyes of Jehovah. That this signifies that it was contrary to the Divine order, is evident from the signification of “evil in the eyes of Jehovah,” or evil against Him, as being what is contrary to the order which is from Him. This appears also from the deed, and likewise from the statute in regard to the husband’s brother, namely, that his brother’s wife should take his shoe from off his foot, and spit in his face, and that his name should be called in Israel, The house of him that hath his shoe taken off (Deuteronomy 25:8-10), whereby was signified that he was without good external or internal; and they who are without good, and are in evil, are against Divine order. All that evil which springs or flows forth from interior evil (that is, from the intention or end of evil, such as was this of Onan’s), is contrary to Divine order; but that which does not spring or flow forth from interior evil, that is, from an intention or end of evil, though it sometimes appears like evil, yet is not so, provided the end is not evil, for the end qualifies every deed. For man’s life is in his end, because what he loves and thence thinks, he has for his end; the life of his soul being nothing else.

[2] Everyone is able to know that evil is contrary to Divine order, and good according to it; for Divine order is the Lord Himself in heaven, because the Divine good and truth which are from Him constitute order, insomuch that they are order, Divine good its essential, and Divine truth its formal. When Divine order is represented in form it appears as a man; for the Lord, from whom it is, is the only Man (n. 49, 288, 477, 565, 187, 1871, 1894, 3638, 3639); and insofar as angels, spirits, and men receive from Him, that is, insofar as they are in good and thence in truth, thus insofar as they are in His Divine order, so far they are men. From this it is that the universal heaven represents one man, which is called the Grand Man, and that the whole and every part of man corresponds thereto, as has been shown at the end of the chapters. From this also it is that the angels in heaven all appear in the human form; and that, on the other hand, the evil spirits who are in hell, though from fantasy they appear to one another like men, in the light of heaven appear as monsters, more dire and horrible according to the evil in which they are (n. 4533); and this because evil itself is contrary to order, and thus contrary to the human form; for as before said the Divine order when represented in form appears as a man.

4533. Among the wonderful things that take place in the other life is also this, that when the angels of heaven look at evil spirits, the latter appear altogether different from what they appear to one another. When evil spirits and genii are by themselves, and in their own fatuous luminosity (which as before said is like that of a coal fire), they appear to themselves to be in a human form, and also according to their phantasies not uncomely. But when the same are looked at by the angels of heaven, that luminosity is instantly dissipated, and they appear with totally different faces, each according to his genius. Some are dusky and black like devils; some have ghastly faces like that of a corpse; some have almost no face at all, and instead of a face there is a mass of hair; some are like grates of teeth; some like skeletons; and what was still more strange, some are like monsters, the deceitful are like serpents, and the most deceitful are like vipers, while others appear differently. But as soon as the angels remove their look from them, they appear in their own previous form, such as they have in their own luminosity. The angels look at the evil whenever they observe them trying to get out of their hells into the world of spirits, intending to do evil to others; and in this way they are detected and are cast back again. The reason why there is such an efficacy in the look of the angels, is that there is a correspondence between intellectual sight and that of the eye; and therefore there is a sharp-sightedness in their look, before which the infernal luminosity is dissipated, and evil spirits appear in the form and genius that belong to them.