788. 18:19 "And they put dust on their heads and cried out, weeping and mourning, and saying, 'Woe, woe, that great city!'" This symbolizes their interior and exterior grief and mourning, which is a lamentation that so eminent a religion was completely destroyed and condemned.

Putting dust on their heads symbolizes their interior and exterior grief and mourning over the destruction and damnation, as we will show below. To cry out, weeping and mourning, symbolizes their exterior grief and mourning - to weep symbolizing a mourning of the soul, and to grieve a grief of the heart. "Woe, woe, that great city!" symbolizes a grievous lamentation over the destruction and damnation. That "woe" symbolizes a lamentation over a calamity, misfortune, or damnation, and that "woe, woe," therefore symbolizes a grievous lamentation, may be seen in nos. 416, 769, 785; and that the city symbolizes the Roman Catholic religion may be seen in no. 785 and elsewhere.

That putting dust on the head symbolizes an interior grief and mourning over a destruction and damnation is clear from the following passages:

They will cry bitterly and cast dust on their heads; they will roll about in ashes. (Ezekiel 27:30)

(The daughters) of Zion sit on the ground...; they have cast dust on their heads... (Lamentations 2:10)

(Job's friends) rent their tunics and sprinkled dust upon their heads... (Job 2:12)

Come down and sit in the dust, O virgin daughter of Babylon; sit on the ground without a throne... (Isaiah 47:1)

And so on elsewhere.

The people put dust on their heads when they grieved deeply, because dust symbolized something damned, as is apparent from Genesis 3:14, Matthew 10:14, Mark 6:11, Luke 10:10-12, and dust on the head represented the people's acknowledgment that of themselves they were damned, and thus their repentance, as in Matthew 11:21, Luke 10:13.

Dust symbolizes something damned because the land over the hells in the spiritual world consists of nothing but dust, without grass or plants.

140. "'That all the churches may know that I am He who searches the reins and hearts.'" This symbolically means, so that the church may know that the Lord sees the quality of truth and the quality of good in everyone.

The seven churches symbolize the whole church, as before. Searching the reins and hearts means, symbolically, to see everything that a person believes and loves, thus the quality of truth and the quality of good in him.

This is the symbolic meaning of searching the reins and hearts because of their correspondence, for the Word in its literal sense consists only of things that correspond. The correspondence results from the fact that as the reins or kidneys purify the blood of its impurities called urinous, and as the heart purifies the blood of its contaminants called pollutants, so the truth of faith purifies a person of his falsities, and the goodness of love purifies a person of his evils.

[2] For this reason the ancients located love and its affections in the heart, and intelligence and its perceptions in the reins or kidneys, as can be seen from the following passages in the Word:

Behold, You desire truth in the reins, ¹ and in secret You make wisdom known to me. (Psalms 51:6)

...You possess my reins... My frame was not hidden from You, when I was made in secret... (Psalms 139:13, 15)

...my heart is provoked, and with my reins I sharpen myself. (But) I am stupid and ignorant. (Psalms 73:21-22)

I, Jehovah, search the heart (and) test the reins, even to give every man according to his ways... (Jeremiah 17:10)

You are near in their mouth, but far from their reins. ...You, O Jehovah..., will see me, and You will test my heart... (Jeremiah 12:2-3)

...Jehovah, a judge of righteousness, testing the reins and the heart... (Jeremiah 11:20, cf. 20:12)

...establish the righteous, (for) You who test the hearts and reins are a righteous God. (Psalms 7:9)

Test me, O Jehovah, and try me; examine my reins and my heart. (Psalms 26:2)

The reins in these passages symbolize truths of intelligence and faith, and the heart symbolizes the goodness of love and charity.

To be shown that the heart symbolizes love and its affections, see Angelic Wisdom Regarding Divine Love and Wisdom, nos. 371-393.

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