Arcana Coelestia #9328
9328. 'And throw into confusion all the people' means the dismay of all falsities. This is clear from the meaning of 'throwing into confusion' as dismay, dealt with below; and from the meaning of 'the people' as those guided by truths, thus in the abstract sense as truths themselves, and in the contrary sense as falsities, dealt with in 1259, 1260, 2928, 3295, 3581, 6232. The reason why 'throwing into confusion' means dismay is that those who are dismayed are thrown in heart and mind into such confusion that they are mad and charge of their own accord into destruction. The fact that such dismay is meant by 'throwing into confusion' is evident in Zechariah,
On that day there will be great confusion from Jehovah among those who fight against Jerusalem. And everyone will seize his companion's hand, 1 and his [other] hand will rise up against his companion's hand. Zechariah 14:12-13.
'Fighting against Jerusalem' means doing so against the Church, thus also against the truths and forms of the good of faith which constitute the Church. 'Confusion', it is evident, means dismay to the point of madness. In Moses,
Jehovah your God will deliver up 2 the nations before you, and will throw them into great confusion until they are destroyed. Deuteronomy 7:23.
'Confusion' stands for such dismay.
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Arcana Coelestia #8200
8200. 'And Moses stretched out his hand over the sea' means the exercising of power by God's truth over hell. This is clear from the meaning of 'stretching out the hand' as an exercising of power, dealt with in 7673, 8183; from the representation of 'Moses' as God's truth, dealt with often; and from the meaning of 'the sea', in this case the Sea Suph, as hell, dealt with in 8099, 8137, 8138. 1 The expression 'the exercising of power by God's truth' is used because God's total power is exercised through the truth that emanates from the Lord. This truth created all things, according to the following in John,
All things were made through the Word, and without Him nothing was made that was made. John 1:3.
'The Word' is the Lord in respect of Divine Truth. Through this Truth all things in heaven and in hell are arranged into order. It is the source of all order on earth too; and all miracles were accomplished through it.
[2] In short, Divine Truth holds all power within itself, so completely that it is power itself. There are some in the next life who possess truth in fuller measure than others. This gives them power which is so great that they can pass through hell without any risk to themselves. At the presence of these people those in hell flee this way and that. There are also some who use the truth from God to exercise power magically. These and the former will be spoken of at the ends of chapters, in which in the Lord's Divine mercy the hells will be the subject. 2 People who contemplate the causes of things from the standpoint of external and worldly matters inevitably see the truth from God as something that exists merely on a thought-level and has no real existence beyond that. That truth however is the supreme essential entity from which all things in both worlds - the spiritual world and the natural world - derive their existence.
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1. In his rough draft Swedenborg has 8099, 8137, 8148. Possibly 8099, 8131, 8183 is intended.
2. This proposal was not fulfilled, but presumably the material mentioned here concerning the hells appeared in the work published a few years later, in 1758, whose English title is Heaven and Hell.
