Verses 1-5. The man of the Spiritual Church, before being made perfect, claims merit to himself for his good deeds, and consequently worship is profaned by falsity; and revelation takes place that such worship and its falsifications must be destroyed.

Verses 6-9. For by such worship the church is not only in secret, but openly corrupted, except that those who are in good, and in a state of temptation, zealously destroy it in themselves, and thus completely.

Verses 10-13. Concerning the happy state, even to eternity, of those who are in celestial-natural good and thus overcome.

Verses 14-15. The quality of the wicked who thus profane good and truth is described, and involves separation from the church, a state of confirmation in evil and falsity externally, and of the violation of the heavenly marriage internally.

Verses 16-18. Wherefore the man of the church is instructed that he must persistently oppose the deceitful insinuations of all falsity from evil.

7307. Behold he goeth out unto the waters. That this signifies that then they who were infesting would be in falsities from fallacies, is evident from the representation of Pharaoh, as being those who infest (of which above); and from the signification of “waters,” here the waters of Egypt, as being falsities from fallacies. That these falsities, or falsities from this origin, are here signified, is because by the “serpent into which the rod of Aaron was turned” these falsities are signified (see n. 7293 (That “waters” denote truths, and in the opposite sense falsities, see n. 739, 790, 2702, 3058, 3424, 4976, 5668; and that the “river of Egypt” denotes falsity, n. 6693)