788. 18:19 "And they put dust on their heads and cried out, weeping and mourning, and saying, 'Woe, woe, that great city!'" This symbolizes their interior and exterior grief and mourning, which is a lamentation that so eminent a religion was completely destroyed and condemned.

Putting dust on their heads symbolizes their interior and exterior grief and mourning over the destruction and damnation, as we will show below. To cry out, weeping and mourning, symbolizes their exterior grief and mourning - to weep symbolizing a mourning of the soul, and to grieve a grief of the heart. "Woe, woe, that great city!" symbolizes a grievous lamentation over the destruction and damnation. That "woe" symbolizes a lamentation over a calamity, misfortune, or damnation, and that "woe, woe," therefore symbolizes a grievous lamentation, may be seen in nos. 416, 769, 785; and that the city symbolizes the Roman Catholic religion may be seen in no. 785 and elsewhere.

That putting dust on the head symbolizes an interior grief and mourning over a destruction and damnation is clear from the following passages:

They will cry bitterly and cast dust on their heads; they will roll about in ashes. (Ezekiel 27:30)

(The daughters) of Zion sit on the ground...; they have cast dust on their heads... (Lamentations 2:10)

(Job's friends) rent their tunics and sprinkled dust upon their heads... (Job 2:12)

Come down and sit in the dust, O virgin daughter of Babylon; sit on the ground without a throne... (Isaiah 47:1)

And so on elsewhere.

The people put dust on their heads when they grieved deeply, because dust symbolized something damned, as is apparent from Genesis 3:14, Matthew 10:14, Mark 6:11, Luke 10:10-12, and dust on the head represented the people's acknowledgment that of themselves they were damned, and thus their repentance, as in Matthew 11:21, Luke 10:13.

Dust symbolizes something damned because the land over the hells in the spiritual world consists of nothing but dust, without grass or plants.

416. Saying with a loud voice, "Woe, woe, woe to the inhabitants of the earth, because of the remaining blasts of the trumpet of the three angels who are about to sound!" This symbolizes the utmost lamentation over the state of damnation of people in the church who in doctrine and life have confirmed themselves in a faith divorced from charity.

"Woe" symbolizes a lamentation over the evil in someone, and so over his unhappy state. Here it means over the state of damnation of those people who are the subject of the next chapter and later. "Woe, woe, woe," moreover, symbolizes the utmost lamentation; for tripling it forms a superlative, since three symbolizes all and complete (no. 505).

Inhabitants of the earth mean people who are in a church which has the Word and where by it the Lord is known. To be shown that the earth symbolizes the church, see no. 285 above.

The blasts of the trumpet of the three angels who are about to sound symbolize the examination and exposure of the state of the church and life in people who in doctrine and life have confirmed themselves in a faith divorced from charity, over whose state the lamentation takes place.

"Woe" symbolizes a lamentation over the present or future calamity, unhappiness, or damnation of various other people in the following:

Woe to you, ...Pharisees (and) hypocrites... (Matthew 23:13-16, 23, 25, 27, 29)

...woe to (the) man by whom (the Son of man) is betrayed! (Luke 22:22)

...woe to him through whom (offenses) do come! (Luke 17:1)

Woe to those who join house to house... Woe to those who rise early in the morning; they pursue intoxicating drink... Woe to those who draw to themselves iniquity... Woe to those who speak... good of evil... Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes... Woe to men mighty at drinking wine... (Isaiah 5:8, 11, 18, 20, 21, 22)

And so also in many other places.

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