To strike or smite, when used in the Bible, means to attack, harm or destroy, and is usually in reference to an attack on someone's knowledge and intellect. This is actually true both when evil people strike good people, trying to destroy their understanding of spiritual things, and when the Lord is pictured as striking people (with plagues in Egypt, for example), which most often represents the dulling of the intellect and destruction of knowledge in evil people to prevent them from doing spiritual harm to others.

(références: Apocalypse Revealed 498; Arcana Coelestia 1487, 6758, 6765, 7330, 7871, 9007, 9034, 9081, 9126, 10510)

6758. 'And he saw an Egyptian man striking a Hebrew man' means alienated factual knowledge trying to destroy the Church's truth. This is clear from the meaning of 'an Egyptian man' as factual knowledge alienated from truth, dealt with in 6692; from the meaning of 'striking' as destroying, here trying to destroy, since falsities are unable to destroy truths; and from the meaning of 'a Hebrew man' as the Church's truth, 'a man' meaning truth, 3134, and 'Hebrew' the Church, 6675, 6684.