Waters
'Waters' particularly signify the spiritual parts of a person, or the intellectual aspects of faith, and also their opposites.
'The waters above the firmament,' as in Genesis 1:7, signify the knowledges in the internal self, and 'the waters beneath the firmament' signify the knowledges of the external self.
'Waters,' as in Ezekiel 47:9, refer to the New Jerusalem, and they signify spiritual things from a celestial origin.
'Many waters,' as in Revelation 17:1, signify truths of the Word adulterated. 'Waters' or 'rivers' signify spiritual, rational, or scientific things pertaining to truth.
'Waters … that go softly,' as in Isaiah 8:6-7, signify spiritual things, and 'waters … strong and many,' signify falsities.
'Waters,' as in Psalms 104:3, signify divine truths.
'Waters' signify truths in the natural self, and in the opposite sense, falsities.
'The waters were dried up from off the earth,' as in Genesis 8:7, signifies the apparent dissipation of falsities.
(References: Apocalypse Explained 17; Apocalypse Revealed 50; Genesis 8)
Arcana Coelestia #8200
8200. 'And Moses stretched out his hand over the sea' means the exercising of power by God's truth over hell. This is clear from the meaning of 'stretching out the hand' as an exercising of power, dealt with in 7673, 8183; from the representation of 'Moses' as God's truth, dealt with often; and from the meaning of 'the sea', in this case the Sea Suph, as hell, dealt with in 8099, 8137, 8138. 1 The expression 'the exercising of power by God's truth' is used because God's total power is exercised through the truth that emanates from the Lord. This truth created all things, according to the following in John,
All things were made through the Word, and without Him nothing was made that was made. John 1:3.
'The Word' is the Lord in respect of Divine Truth. Through this Truth all things in heaven and in hell are arranged into order. It is the source of all order on earth too; and all miracles were accomplished through it.
[2] In short, Divine Truth holds all power within itself, so completely that it is power itself. There are some in the next life who possess truth in fuller measure than others. This gives them power which is so great that they can pass through hell without any risk to themselves. At the presence of these people those in hell flee this way and that. There are also some who use the truth from God to exercise power magically. These and the former will be spoken of at the ends of chapters, in which in the Lord's Divine mercy the hells will be the subject. 2 People who contemplate the causes of things from the standpoint of external and worldly matters inevitably see the truth from God as something that exists merely on a thought-level and has no real existence beyond that. That truth however is the supreme essential entity from which all things in both worlds - the spiritual world and the natural world - derive their existence.
Footnotes:
1. In his rough draft Swedenborg has 8099, 8137, 8148. Possibly 8099, 8131, 8183 is intended.
2. This proposal was not fulfilled, but presumably the material mentioned here concerning the hells appeared in the work published a few years later, in 1758, whose English title is Heaven and Hell.
