4257. 'Lest he comes and smites me, the mother with the children' means that it is about to perish. This becomes clear without explanation. Among the ancients who lived in an age of representatives and meaningful signs 'smiting the mother with the children ¹ was a proverbial expression meaning the destruction of the Church and of everything that belonged to the Church either in general, or in particular with anyone who in himself is a Church. For 'mother' was used by them to mean the Church, 289, 2691, 2717, and 'children' or 'sons' truths which belonged to the Church, 489, 491, 533, 1147, 2623, 3373. Consequently 'smiting the mother with the children' means to perish completely, as a person too perishes completely when the Church and that which belongs to the Church perishes in him; that is, when the affection for truth, which strictly is the meaning of 'mother' and which constitutes the Church in a person, is destroyed.

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8799. 'For he will surely be stoned' means that [as a result] the truths of faith which they possess will be destroyed. This is clear from the meaning of 'being stoned' as the punishment for falsity and for the violation of truth, dealt with in 5156, 7456, 8575. The reason why that is the punishment suffered by those who in arrogant self-confidence ascend to the Divine in a heaven above is that when they do this all the intelligence they possessed previously is destroyed; for they are seized then by blindness, see just above in 8797.