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:

1005. That 'requiring your blood with your souls' means that violence done to charity will punish itself, 'blood' meaning violence, and 'souls' people who do violence, is clear from what comes before and after, and also from the meaning of 'blood' in the contrary sense, as well as from the meaning of 'soul' in the contrary sense. First from what comes before in the previous verse referring to the eating of blood, which, as shown, meant profanation, and from what comes after in the next verse referring to the shedding of blood, it is consequently clear that the subject here is the state and the punishment of one who mixes holy things with unholy. It is further clear from the meaning of 'blood' in the contrary sense, in that 'blood' in the genuine sense means that which is celestial and in reference to a regenerate spiritual person means charity - which constitutes the celestial in his case - but in the contrary sense means violence done to charity, and therefore that which is contrary to charity, namely all hatred, all revenge, all cruelty, and especially profanation, as becomes clear from the places in the Word that are quoted in 374, 376. Finally it is clear from the meaning of 'soul' in the contrary sense, in that in the Word 'soul' means life, in general, and so everybody who lives, but also means, since a person's life is by nature what he himself is, any individual who does violence. This may be confirmed from many parts of the Word, but for the moment let solely the following from Moses do so,

He who eats blood, I will set My face ¹ against the soul eating blood, and I will cut him off from among his people, for the soul of the flesh is in the blood, and I have given it upon the altar, to make atonement for your souls, for the blood itself will make atonement by reason of the soul. Leviticus 17:10-11, 14.

Here 'soul' stands for life in three different senses, as it does many times elsewhere. The fact that violence done to charity will punish itself will be clear from what follows.

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