209. 'Wretched and poor.' This symbolically means that they have no truths or goods.

Wretched and poor people mean, in the spiritual sense of the Word, people who lack concepts of truth and good, for they are spiritually wretched and poor. They are also meant by the people in the following passages:

I am wretched and poor, O Lord; be mindful of me. (Psalms 40:18) [NCBSP: Psalms 40:17], cf. Psalms 70:5)

Incline Your ear, O Jehovah, and answer me, for I am wretched and poor. (Psalms 86:1)

The impious bare the sword and bend their bow, to cast down the wretched and poor... (Psalms 37:14)

(The impious man) persecuted the wretched and poor man, even to slay the downcast in heart. (Psalms 109:16)

(God) will judge the wretched of the people; He will save the children of the poor... He will deliver the poor man when he cries, and the wretched man... (Psalms 72:4, 12-13)

Jehovah... delivers the wretched man from one who is too strong for him, and the poor man... from those who plunder him. (Psalms 35:10)

(The impious man) devises wicked plans to destroy the wretched with lying words, even when the poor man speaks justly. (Isaiah 37:7)

The wretched shall have their joy in Jehovah, and the poor of mankind shall exult in the Holy One of Israel. (Isaiah 29:19)

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. (Matthew 5:3)

See also elsewhere, as Isaiah 10:2; Jeremiah 22:16; Ezekiel 16:49; 18:12; 22:29; Amos 8:4; Psalms 9:18; 69:32-33; 74:21; 109:22; 140:12; Deuteronomy 15:11; 24:14; Luke 14:13, 21, 23.

The wretched and poor mean chiefly people who lack concepts of truth and goodness and yet desire them, since the rich mean people who possess concepts of truth and goodness (no. 206).

204. "'So then, because you are lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, it shall come to pass that I vomit you out of My mouth.'" (3:16) This symbolizes their profanation and consequent separation from the Lord.

To be vomited out of My mouth means, symbolically, to be separated from the Lord, and to be separated from the Lord is consequently to be in neither heaven nor hell, but in a place apart, bereft of human life, surrounded by nothing but hallucinations. The reason is that they have mixed truths with falsities, and goods with evils, thus holy things with profane ones, to the point that these cannot be separated in them. And because a person cannot be prepared then to be in either heaven or hell, every bit of his rational life is eradicated, with only the lowest capacities of his life remaining, and when these have been separated from his life's interior capacities, they are nothing but hallucinations.

For more on the state and lot of such people, see Angelic Wisdom Regarding Divine Providence, nos. 226-228 231, which should suffice to give a concept of them.

They are said to be vomited out because after death everyone comes first into the world of spirits, which is midway between heaven and hell, and is there prepared; and this world corresponds to the stomach, in which everything ingested is prepared, either to become blood and flesh or to become excrement and urine. The first have a correspondence with heaven, the latter with hell. But whatever is vomited out of the stomach is matter not separated, but mixed together.

Because of this correspondence we find vomiting out and vomit mentioned in the following passages:

(Drink and make drunk) that your uncircumcised foreskin may be exposed. The cup... of Jehovah will come around to you, so that a disgraceful vomit is upon your glory. (Habakkuk 2:15-16)

Make (Moab) drunk..., that (he) may applaud in his vomit... (Jeremiah 48:26)

...all tables are full of vomit thrown up... To whom will he teach knowledge? (Isaiah 28:8-9)

So, too, elsewhere, as in Jeremiah 25:27, Leviticus 18:24-25, 28.

The reason lukewarm water induces vomiting is owing also to the correspondence.