Apocalypse Revealed #399
399. And hail and fire followed, mingled with blood. This symbolizes falsity springing from a hellish love, destroying goodness and truth and falsifying the Word.
Hail symbolizes falsity destroying goodness and truth. Fire symbolizes hellish love. And blood symbolizes the falsification of truth.
The reason that hail symbolizes falsity destroying goodness and truth will be seen below. To be shown that fire is love in both senses, heavenly and hellish, see no. 468; and that blood is the Lord's Divine truth, which is also the Word, and in an opposite sense, the Word falsified, no. 379.
When these are assembled into a single meaning, it is apparent that "hail and fire followed, mingled with blood," symbolizes falsity springing from a hellish love, destroying goodness and truth and falsifying the Word.
This is the symbolic meaning because these are the kinds of things that appear in the spiritual world when the atmosphere of the Lord's Divine love and wisdom dips down from heaven into societies where there are falsities springing from hellish love and these are used to falsify the Word.
[2] Hail and fire together have the same symbolism in the following places:
From the brightness before Him, ...clouds passed with hailstones and coals of fire... ...the Most High uttered His voice, hailstones and coals of fire. And He sent out His (many) arrows and scattered them... (Psalms 18:12-14)
I will dispute... with pestilence and blood, and I will rain down on (them)...hailstones, fire, and brimstone. (Ezekiel 38:22)
Then Jehovah will cause His... voice to be heard..., with the flame of a devouring fire... and hailstones. (Isaiah 30:30)
He made their rain hail, a flaming fire in their land..., and splintered the trees of their border. (Psalms 105:32-33)
He smote their vines with hail, and their sycamore trees with heavy hail, and... their cattle with burning coals... He sent in the wrath of His anger... an incursion of evil angels. (Psalms 78:47-49)
The latter passages refer to Egypt, of whom we read in the books of Moses the following:
Moses stretched out his rod... and Jehovah sent voices and hail... And there was hail and fire together proceeding in the midst of heavy hail... And the hail struck every herb of the field and broke every tree of the field. (Exodus 9:23-35)
All the miracles done in Egypt symbolized those evils and falsities, springing from a hellish love, that existed in the Egyptians, each miracle symbolizing some evil and falsity. For the church with them had been representational, as it was in many Asiatic kingdoms, but one that became idolatrous and given to sorcery. The Red Sea symbolizes hell, in which the Egyptians finally perished.
[3] The hailstones which killed many more of the enemy than the sword in Joshua 10:11 have a similar symbolism. So, too, hail in the following passages:
Woe to the crown of pride... ...strong is the Lord, like an inundation of hail... The hail overturns the refuge of lies... (Isaiah 28:1-2, 17)
It will hail until it flattens the forest... (Isaiah 32:19)
The temple of God was opened in heaven..., and there were lightnings, voices, and thunderings, an earthquake, and great hail. (Revelation 11:19)
And great hail with the weight of a talent fell from heaven upon men. (Revelation 16:21)
...have you seen the treasuries of hail, which have been reserved... for the day of battle and war? (Job 38:22-23)
Say to those who plaster the unsuitable that it will fall. There will be flooding rain, in which you, hailstones, shall fall. (Ezekiel 13:11)
To plaster the unsuitable is to defend falsity so that it appears as true. Consequently people who do this are called hailstones.
Judges 15
1
But it happened after a while, in the time of wheat harvest, that Samson visited his wife with a young goat; and he said, "I will go in to my wife into the room." But her father wouldn't allow him to go in.
2
Her father said, "I most certainly thought that you had utterly hated her; therefore I gave her to your companion. Isn't her younger sister more beautiful than she? Please take her, instead."
3
Samson said to them, "This time I will be blameless in regard of the Philistines, when I harm them."
4
Samson went and caught three hundred foxes, and took torches, and turned tail to tail, and put a torch in the midst between every two tails.
5
When he had set the brands on fire, he let them go into the standing grain of the Philistines, and burnt up both the shocks and the standing grain, and also the olive groves.
6
Then the Philistines said, "Who has done this?" They said, "Samson, the son-in-law of the Timnite, because he has taken his wife, and given her to his companion." The Philistines came up, and burnt her and her father with fire.
7
Samson said to them, "If you behave like this, surely I will be avenged of you, and after that I will cease."
8
He struck them hip and thigh with a great slaughter: and he went down and lived in the cleft of the rock of Etam.
9
Then the Philistines went up, and encamped in Judah, and spread themselves in Lehi.
10
The men of Judah said, "Why have you come up against us?" They said, "We have come up to bind Samson, to do to him as he has done to us."
11
Then three thousand men of Judah went down to the cleft of the rock of Etam, and said to Samson, "Don't you know that the Philistines are rulers over us? What then is this that you have done to us?" He said to them, "As they did to me, so have I done to them."
12
They said to him, "We have come down to bind you, that we may deliver you into the hand of the Philistines." Samson said to them, "Swear to me that you will not fall on me yourselves."
13
They spoke to him, saying, "No; but we will bind you fast, and deliver you into their hand; but surely we will not kill you." They bound him with two new ropes, and brought him up from the rock.
14
When he came to Lehi, the Philistines shouted as they met him: and the Spirit of Yahweh came mightily on him, and the ropes that were on his arms became as flax that was burnt with fire, and his bands dropped from off his hands.
15
He found a fresh jawbone of a donkey, and put forth his hand, and took it, and struck a thousand men therewith.
16
Samson said, "With the jawbone of a donkey, heaps on heaps; with the jawbone of a donkey I have struck a thousand men."
17
It happened, when he had made an end of speaking, that he cast away the jawbone out of his hand; and that place was called Ramath Lehi.
18
He was very thirsty, and called on Yahweh, and said, "You have given this great deliverance by the hand of your servant; and now shall I die for thirst, and fall into the hand of the uncircumcised?"
19
But God split the hollow place that is in Lehi, and water came out of it. When he had drunk, his spirit came again, and he revived: therefore its name was called En Hakkore, which is in Lehi, to this day.
20
He judged Israel in the days of the Philistines twenty years.
