18. 'The face ¹ of the deep' is that person's desires and resulting falsities, of which he consists and in which he is completely absorbed; and because he has no light at all he is like the deep, or something thoroughly obscure. Throughout the Word such people are also called 'the deep' and 'the depths of the sea' which are dried up or laid waste until a person's regeneration starts, as in Isaiah,

Awake as in the days of antiquity, the generations of long ago. Was it not You that did dry up the sea, the waters of the great deep; making the depths of the sea a road for the redeemed to go across? Let the ransomed of Jehovah return. Isaiah 51:9-11.

Furthermore, when looked at from heaven, this kind of person resembles a darkened mass with no life to it. The same expressions embody within them in general the vastation in man, described many times by the Prophets, which precedes regeneration. For before a person can know what truth is, or be moved by good, the things that hinder and offer resistance must be removed. Thus the old man must die before the new one can be conceived.

Footnotes:

1851. 'And afterwards they will go out with great acquisitions' means release, and that they will possess celestial and spiritual goods. This is clear from the meaning of 'going out' as being released, and from the meaning of 'acquisitions' as celestial and spiritual good, for this is what those people acquire who suffer forms of persecution and undergo forms of temptation, oppression, and affliction or slavery, dealt with in this and the previous verse. Those goods were also represented and meant by the acquisitions of the sons of Jacob when they came out of Egypt, Exodus 11:2; 12:36, as well as by their acquisitions in the land of Canaan after the nations had been driven out. And similar examples occur in various places in the Prophets where reference is made to spoils taken from enemies, by which they were enriched.