450. Having breastplates that were fiery, hyacinthine and sulfurous. This symbolizes their fanciful and illusory arguments springing from a hellish love and their own intelligence, and from the attendant lusts.

Breastplates symbolize the arguments people use to do battle for faith alone (no. 436). Fire symbolizes heavenly love, and in an opposite sense, hellish love (nos. 452, 468, 494). Hyacinthine symbolizes intelligence springing from a spiritual love, and in an opposite sense, intelligence springing from a hellish love, which is one's own inherent intelligence, as explained below. And sulfur symbolizes lust arising from that hellish love and expressed through their own inherent intelligence (no. 452). It follows from this that breastplates fiery, hyacinthine and sulfurous have the symbolic meaning stated.

[2] The reason their arguments in defense of faith alone are thus described is that all those people who believe themselves to be justified by faith alone, which is to say, absolved from sins, never give any thought to repentance, and an impenitent person engages in nothing but sins. All sins, moreover, spring from and so draw their character from a hellish love, from one's own inherent intelligence, and from the attendant lusts; and people caught up in them not only act on them, but they also speak, indeed think and will, in conformity with them, and accordingly reason and argue in conformity with them. These are who they are because they are their life; but who they are is a devil, and their life a hellish one.

In actual fact, however, people who live a moral life solely for the sake of themselves and the world do not know this. The reason is that although they inwardly are such as described, in outward appearances they are like people who live a Christian life. But they should know that when anyone of them dies, he comes into his interior life, because it is the life of his spirit, and he is his internal self. Moreover, his inner character then accommodates his outward one to itself, and they become alike. Consequently the moral virtues of these people's life in the world then become like the scales of fish that are scraped away.

The case is altogether different with people who regard the precepts of a moral life as Divine, and who make them at the same time civil precepts because they are expressive of a love for the neighbor.

[3] Hyacinthine symbolizes intelligence springing from the affection of a spiritual love because this color takes its hue from the redness of fire and the whiteness of light; and fire symbolizes love, and light intelligence. This intelligence is symbolically meant by the hyacinthine blue in the coverings and veils of the tabernacle (Exodus 26:31, 36; 27:16), and in Aaron's ephod (Exodus 28:6, 15); by the cloth of hyacinthine blue placed on the ark, table, lampstand, and altar [in the tabernacle] when the people prepared to journey (Numbers 4:6-7, 9, 11-12); and by the blue stuff in Ezekiel 27:7, 24.

On other hand, intelligence springing from the affection of a hellish love is symbolically meant by hyacinthine in Ezekiel 23:

Oholah (or Samaria) played the harlot... and she doted on her lovers, the neighboring Assyrians, clothed in hyacinthine blue..., horsemen riding on horses. (Ezekiel 23:4-6)

Thus is described a church which by the reasonings of its own inherent intelligence had falsified the Word's truths.

And in Jeremiah:

They are altogether foolish and grow stupid; the teaching of vanities is wood. Beaten silver... is brought from Tarshish..., the work of the craftsman and the hands of the metalsmith; hyacinthine blue and purple are their clothing, all the work of skillful men. (Jeremiah 10:8-9)

The work of the craftsman and the hands of the metalsmith, and all the work of skillful men, symbolize here that they spring from their own inherent intelligence.

494. And if anyone wants to harm them, fire will proceed from their mouth and devour their enemies. (11:5) This symbolically means that anyone who wishes to destroy these two essential elements perishes from a hellish love.

To want to harm the two witnesses means, symbolically, to wish to destroy the two essential elements of the New Church, namely, an acknowledgment of the Lord as being God of heaven and earth even as to His humanity, and a life in accordance with the Ten Commandments. To be shown that these are the two witnesses, see no. 490 above.

Fire's proceeding from their mouth means, symbolically, that hellish love will do so; and its devouring their enemies means, symbolically, that those who harm them will perish because of it. Here, however, it is not to be supposed that fire will issue from the mouth of the witnesses, but that it will do so from people who wish to destroy these two essential elements of the New Church, meant by the two witnesses (no. 490). The fire is the fire of hell; for people who do not live according to the Ten Commandments, and who do not turn to God, their Savior and Redeemer, cannot help but be caught up in a hellish love and perish.

[2] The case is the same as elsewhere in the Word where we are told that Jehovah sends fire that consumes the wicked, or that Jehovah does other things like that out of the fire of His wrath, anger, or fury, which mean not that they come from Jehovah, but that they do so from the hellish love of the wicked.

We read of instances like that in the Word because that is how they appear, and the Word in its literal sense was composed in terms of appearances and things that correspond.

Since we are told that fire proceeded from their mouth, and this means that it originated from people caught up in a hellish love, we will cite some passages where fire is said to issue from Jehovah:

The breath of Jehovah, like a stream of brimstone, will consume it. (Isaiah 30:33)

Smoke went up from His nostrils, and fire from His mouth...; coals were kindled by it. (Psalms 18:8)

(I will) pour out on them... the wrath of My anger; for all the earth shall be devoured in the fire of My zeal. (Zephaniah 3:8)

...behold, Jehovah will come with fire... for retribution in the wrath of His anger, and His rebuke in flames of fire. (Isaiah 66:15)

You will be visited by Jehovah... with the flame of devouring fire. (Isaiah 29:6, cf. 30:30)

And so on in many places elsewhere.