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:

6690. 'That He made them houses' means that it - true factual knowledge in the natural - was arranged into a heavenly pattern. This is clear from the meaning of 'house' as the natural mind, dealt with in 4973, 5023, thus the things that compose the natural mind. But because what is said here refers to the midwives, those things are true factual knowledge in the natural, 6687. 'Making them houses' therefore means arranging that knowledge into order, and it is arranged into order when arranged into a heavenly pattern. It is not at all easy to see that these things are meant by 'making them houses' unless one knows the situation with true factual knowledge that belongs to the natural mind. Something must therefore be said briefly about this. Known facts in the natural are arranged into continuous series, one series tying in with another, so that they all hang together according to the varying relationships and close associations they have with one another. They are not unlike families and their generations; for one is born from another, and in that manner they are brought into existence. This explains why things of the mind, which are forms of good and truth, were spoken of by the ancients as 'houses', the form of good that ruled there being called the father, the truth linked to it the mother, and the derivations from them the sons, daughters, sons-in-law, daughters-in-law, and so on. But the way in which true factual knowledge in the natural is arranged varies from person to person, since the pattern it assumes is imposed on it by the ruling love. That love is at the centre and arranges each fact into position around it. It positions nearest to itself the facts most compatible with it, and the rest are arranged according to their degrees of compatibility. And in this way factual knowledge is given a pattern. If heavenly love rules, then the Lord arranges them all into a heavenly pattern, a pattern like that assumed by heaven itself, thus the pattern assumed by the good of love itself. Such is the pattern into which truths are arranged; and once arranged into it they act in unison with good. At this point when the one is stimulated by the Lord, so is the other; that is to say, when items of belief are stimulated, so are charitable desires, and vice versa. This kind of arrangement is what is meant by the statement that God made the midwives houses.