715. And people blasphemed God because of the plague of the hail, as the plague was exceedingly great. This symbolically means, because the people entrenched such falsities in themselves, they denied truths to the extent that they could not acknowledge them, owing to feelings of repugnance springing from their interior falsities and evils.

To blaspheme God means, symbolically, to deny and not to acknowledge that the Lord alone is God of heaven and earth (no. 571, 582, 697), and to deny and not acknowledge likewise the truth in the Word. "As the plague was exceedingly great" means, symbolically, owing to the aforementioned dreadful and atrocious falsities from their entrenched dogma of justification by faith alone (no. 714). They cannot acknowledge truths owing to those falsities, because an affirmation of falsity is a denial of the truth.

It appears as though the meaning is that the plague of hail was so great that the people were driven by the torment and pain of it to blaspheme God, but that is not what is meant. Rather the meaning is that they could not acknowledge truths owing to their falsities. The case is similar to ones earlier in this chapter, where we are told that they blasphemed the name of God because of the heat (verse 9), and that they blasphemed the God of heaven because of their sufferings and because of their sores (verse 11), the explanations of which may be seen in nos. 692 and 697.