450. Having breastplates that were fiery, hyacinthine and sulfurous. This symbolizes their fanciful and illusory arguments springing from a hellish love and their own intelligence, and from the attendant lusts.

Breastplates symbolize the arguments people use to do battle for faith alone (no. 436). Fire symbolizes heavenly love, and in an opposite sense, hellish love (nos. 452, 468, 494). Hyacinthine symbolizes intelligence springing from a spiritual love, and in an opposite sense, intelligence springing from a hellish love, which is one's own inherent intelligence, as explained below. And sulfur symbolizes lust arising from that hellish love and expressed through their own inherent intelligence (no. 452). It follows from this that breastplates fiery, hyacinthine and sulfurous have the symbolic meaning stated.

[2] The reason their arguments in defense of faith alone are thus described is that all those people who believe themselves to be justified by faith alone, which is to say, absolved from sins, never give any thought to repentance, and an impenitent person engages in nothing but sins. All sins, moreover, spring from and so draw their character from a hellish love, from one's own inherent intelligence, and from the attendant lusts; and people caught up in them not only act on them, but they also speak, indeed think and will, in conformity with them, and accordingly reason and argue in conformity with them. These are who they are because they are their life; but who they are is a devil, and their life a hellish one.

In actual fact, however, people who live a moral life solely for the sake of themselves and the world do not know this. The reason is that although they inwardly are such as described, in outward appearances they are like people who live a Christian life. But they should know that when anyone of them dies, he comes into his interior life, because it is the life of his spirit, and he is his internal self. Moreover, his inner character then accommodates his outward one to itself, and they become alike. Consequently the moral virtues of these people's life in the world then become like the scales of fish that are scraped away.

The case is altogether different with people who regard the precepts of a moral life as Divine, and who make them at the same time civil precepts because they are expressive of a love for the neighbor.

[3] Hyacinthine symbolizes intelligence springing from the affection of a spiritual love because this color takes its hue from the redness of fire and the whiteness of light; and fire symbolizes love, and light intelligence. This intelligence is symbolically meant by the hyacinthine blue in the coverings and veils of the tabernacle (Exodus 26:31, 36; 27:16), and in Aaron's ephod (Exodus 28:6, 15); by the cloth of hyacinthine blue placed on the ark, table, lampstand, and altar [in the tabernacle] when the people prepared to journey (Numbers 4:6-7, 9, 11-12); and by the blue stuff in Ezekiel 27:7, 24.

On other hand, intelligence springing from the affection of a hellish love is symbolically meant by hyacinthine in Ezekiel 23:

Oholah (or Samaria) played the harlot... and she doted on her lovers, the neighboring Assyrians, clothed in hyacinthine blue..., horsemen riding on horses. (Ezekiel 23:4-6)

Thus is described a church which by the reasonings of its own inherent intelligence had falsified the Word's truths.

And in Jeremiah:

They are altogether foolish and grow stupid; the teaching of vanities is wood. Beaten silver... is brought from Tarshish..., the work of the craftsman and the hands of the metalsmith; hyacinthine blue and purple are their clothing, all the work of skillful men. (Jeremiah 10:8-9)

The work of the craftsman and the hands of the metalsmith, and all the work of skillful men, symbolize here that they spring from their own inherent intelligence.

435. And their teeth were like lions' teeth. This symbolically means that matters of the senses, which constitute the lowest elements of the natural self's life, appeared to them to have power over all else.

Teeth symbolize the lowest elements of the natural self's life, which are called sensual, as discussed in no. 424 above. These sensual elements are of two kinds, one having to do with the will, the other with the intellect. Sensual elements having to do with the will are symbolized by women's hair, as said just above in no. 434; and sensual elements having to do with the intellect are symbolized by teeth. The latter, which is to say, sensual people caught up in falsities by conviction, appear to themselves to have power over everything, so that they cannot be overcome. Therefore the locusts' teeth, which symbolize such sensual elements, were like lions' teeth - a lion symbolizing power (no. 241).

That teeth symbolize the lowest elements of a person's life - those elements called sensual - and that when these are divorced from the interior levels of the mind, they are caught up in nothing but falsities and attack truths and destroy them, can be seen from the following passages:

With my soul I lie down among lions...; their teeth are a spear and arrows... (Psalms 57:4)

O God, destroy their teeth in their mouth! Turn aside the molars of the young lions... (Psalms 58:6)

...a nation has come up against My land, strong..., its teeth the teeth of a lion, and it has the molars of a fierce lion. (Joel 1:6)

...O Jehovah..., You have broken the teeth of the impious. (Psalms 3:7)

...a beast (came up from the sea), terrible, dreadful, and exceedingly strong, which had huge iron teeth; it was devouring and breaking in pieces... (Daniel 7:3, 7).

Blessed be Jehovah, who has not given us as prey to their teeth. (Psalms 124:6)

Since sensual people do not see any truth in its own light, but reason and argue about everything as to whether it is so, and since these altercations in the hells sound outside the hells like the gnashing of teeth, which regarded in itself is a colliding of falsity and truth, it is apparent what the gnashing of teeth symbolizes in Matthew 8:12; 13:42, 50; 22:13; 24:51; 25:30, and Luke 13:28; and in some measure what to gnash with the teeth symbolizes in Job 16:9, Psalms 35:15-16; 37:12; 112:10, Micah 3:5, and Lamentations 2:16.