339. And they said to the mountains and rocks, "Fall on us and hide us from the face of Him who sits on the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb!" (6:16) This symbolizes affirmations of evil by falsity and of falsity springing from evil, until they did not acknowledge anything of the Lord's Divinity.
Mountains symbolize loves of evil, thus evils themselves (no. 336), and rocks symbolize falsities of faith. Falling on these people and hiding them means, symbolically, protecting them from influx from heaven. And because this is accomplished by affirmations of evil by means of falsity, and of falsity springing from evil, therefore this is the symbolic meaning. Hiding from the face of Him who sits on the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb means, symbolically, until they no longer acknowledge anything of the Lord's Divinity. He who sits on the throne means the Lord's Divinity from which all else springs, and the Lamb means the Lord Himself in respect to His Divine humanity. The Lord was upon the throne in both respects, as we have shown above. 1
The verse says, from His face and wrath, because all those people who live in caves and rocks do not dare to set foot out of them, or even to stick out a finger, on account of the torment and torture they experience if they do. The reason is that they hate the Lord, even so much that they cannot speak His name. And the Lord's Divine atmosphere pervades everything, which they cannot drive away from themselves except by affirmations of evil by means of falsity, and of falsity springing from evil. It is the delights of evil that cause this.
[2] Similar symbolic meanings are found in the following verse in Hosea:
They shall say to the mountains, "Cover us!" And to the hills, "Fall on us!" (Hosea 10:8)
And in Luke:
Then they will begin to say to the mountains, "Fall on us!" and to the hills, "Cover us!" (Luke 23:30)
That this is the spiritual meaning of these words cannot be seen in the letter, but it is seen in the spiritual sense from the fact that when a last judgment is being executed, then those people who are caught up in evil, but wish to be directed by good, suffer hardships to begin with, but less hard than those who confirm themselves in their evil by means of falsities. For whereas the former lay bare their evil, the latter cover their evil by falsities; and the latter cannot bear Divine influx then, as shown in the following verse.
The caves and caverns into which they cast themselves are correspondent phenomena.
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