761. 18:5 "For her sins have mounted even to heaven, and God has remembered her iniquities." This symbolically means that their evils and falsities infest the heavens, but the Lord will protect the heavens from being violated by them.

Her sins having mounted even to heaven means symbolically that their evils and falsities infest angels in heaven. God's remembering her iniquities means symbolically that the Lord will protect the heavens from being violated by them.

This is the symbolic meaning of these words, because everything in the heavens is good and true, and everything in the hells is evil and false. The heavens and hells are therefore completely apart and in an inverse situation, like antipodes. Consequently evils and falsities cannot mount to the heavens. But still, when evils and falsities increase beyond the degrees of opposition and so beyond a just measure, the heavens are infested, and unless the Lord protects the heavens then, which He does by a stronger influx emanating from Him, violence is done to the heavens. And when this reaches its peak, He then executes a last judgment and so liberates them.

So we are told later in this chapter, "Rejoice over her, O heaven..., for God has visited your judgment on her!" (verse 20) - an exultation expressed in the following chapter, Revelation 19:1-9. And in Jeremiah:

Then the heavens and the earth shall sing over Babylon, and all that is in them, when the plunderers shall come upon her... (Jeremiah 51:48)