806. The conclusions follow logically that of all that was on dry land symbolizes people who no longer had any of that life and that they died means that this life expired. And since the whole living force of love and faith had been eradicated, the term dry land appears.
Dry land is a place without water, that is, where there is no longer anything spiritual, let alone heavenly. The conviction that falsity is true destroys any spiritual or heavenly quality by suffocating it, so to speak, as we can all see from much experience, if we pay attention. Once people have laid hold of an opinion, even if it is utterly false, they stick to it so obstinately that they do not want even to hear anything that contradicts it. They positively refuse to be taught, even if you place the truth before their very eyes. This applies still more strongly to those who treat their misguided opinions with a sort of reverential awe. People who rebuff all truth and pervert what they do allow themselves to hear, suffusing it with their fantasies, are like this.
They are the ones symbolized here by the dry land, which has neither water nor grain on it, as in Ezekiel:
I will turn the rivers into dry ground and sell the land into the hand of the evil and strip the land and its abundance. (Ezekiel 30:12)
Turning the rivers into dry ground stands for a condition in which nothing spiritual remains. And in Jeremiah:
Your land has become dry ground. (Jeremiah 44:22)
Dry ground stands for a ruined and devastated land, where nothing true or good remains.
