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:

4300. 'And the sun rose on him' means when the one kind of good was joined to the other. This is clear from the meaning of 'the sun's rising' as the joining together of the two kinds of good. 'The dawn is coming up' means the time when conjunction is at hand or just beginning, see 4283, from which it follows that 'the sun's rising' means that conjunction itself. 'The sun' in the internal sense means celestial love, 1529, 1530, 2441, 2495, 3636, 3643, 4060, and consequently it means forms of good since these are attributes of that love. When celestial love reveals itself with a person, that is, when it is seen in him, the sun is said to rise on him, for the forms of good which are attributes of that love have a connection with him.