8298. 'They sought a deep place like lead' means that evils drew them down to lower levels like heavy objects in the world. This is clear from the meaning of 'a deep place' as lower levels and the hells in respect of evils, dealt with in 8279, so that 'seeking a deep place' is being drawn down by evils to those places. For their own evils cause the evil to fall, like heavy objects in the world, down towards the hells, see 8279. The expression 'like lead' is used because 'lead' means evil. But verse 5 above stated that 'they went down into deep places of the sea like a stone' because 'a stone' at that point means falsity. Both are heavy, both falsity and evil, and therefore they both fall downwards. Nevertheless evil is what creates heaviness in the spiritual sense and so is what falls as if by gravity. In itself falsity is not heavy; it is so only as a result of the evil that is present in it. For falsity by itself has no weight at all, but acquires it from evil, so that it falls downwards.

[2] It should be recognized that all metals mean good or else truth, and in the contrary sense evil or else falsity. Being less noble than all other metals 'lead' means evil at the lowest level, such as evil belonging to the exterior natural, but in the good sense it means good at that same level; as in Jeremiah,

They are all arch-rebels, ¹ disparagers, bronze and iron; they are all corrupters. The bellows have become hot, the lead has been consumed by the fire; he has thoroughly melted it in vain, for the evil have not been purged out. ² [People] will call them rejected silver, because Jehovah has rejected them. Jeremiah 6:28-30.

And in Ezekiel,

Son of man, the house of Israel has become dross to Me; they are all bronze, and tin, and iron, and lead, in the midst of a furnace. They have become the dross of silver. Ezekiel 22:18.

Poznámky pod čarou:

8232. 'Not so much as one of them remained' means every single one. This is clear without explanation.

The subject in this verse has been the plunging or casting into hell of those who were steeped in falsities arising from evil. But few know what being plunged and cast into hell may be. They imagine that it is being cast down into some place where the devil and his crew are, and that these torment people there. But that is not the situation. When people there are cast into hell, it is nothing other than their being completely choked by utter falsities arising from the evil which ruled them when they were in the world. When they are completely choked by them there they are in hell. The actual evils and falsities in which those people are now immersed are what torment them. But the torment is not due to any grief they feel because they have done evil in the past but because - since doing evil is the delight of their life - they cannot do it in the present; for when they do evil there they suffer punishment and torment at the hands of those to whom they do it. What motivates them chiefly when they do evil to one another is a desire to exercise control, in order to place others in subjection to themselves, which, if others do not allow themselves to be placed in subjection, they accomplish by a thousand methods of punishment and torment. But control there, which they constantly strive to possess, passes by turns from one to another, which means that those who have punished and tormented others are then themselves punished and tormented by others. And this goes on until at length the fear of punishment serves to cool their ardour. From all this one may now see where hell originates and what hell is. Nor is hell fire anything other than the cravings of self-love, which inflame and torment, 6314, 7324, 7575.