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:

6818. EXODUS CHAPTER 3.

TEACHINGS ABOUT CHARITY

More needs to be stated regarding the neighbour, for unless one is aware of what is meant by the neighbour one cannot know how charity should be exercised. In the preliminary section to the previous chapter it was stated that each individual person is the neighbour, yet no one person in the same way as another, and that one governed by good is pre-eminently the neighbour, which means that the good present with a person is what one should love. For when one loves good one loves the Lord since the Lord is the One from whom Good comes, who is present within Good, and who is Good itself.