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)

7871. 'And will strike all the firstborn in the land of Egypt' means the damnation of those governed by faith separated from charity. This is clear from the meaning of 'striking' as damnation, for striking is killing or putting to death, and 'death' in the spiritual sense means damnation, see 6119; from the meaning of 'the firstborn' - when used in reference to the Egyptians, who represent those steeped in falsities arising from evil - as faith separated from charity, 3325, 7039, 7766, 7778, 7779. In the genuine sense the expression 'the firstborn', when it describes a feature of the spiritual Church, means faith that is wedded to charity, see 367, 2435, 3325, 3494, 6344, 7035; therefore in the contrary sense 'the firstborn' is faith devoid of charity.