1673. And they struck the Rephaim in Ashteroth-karnaim, and the Zuzim in Ham, and the Emim in Shaveh-kiriathaim symbolizes persuasive lies, or rather the hells that do the persuading, which the Lord defeated thoroughly. This can be seen from the symbolism of the Rephaim, Zuzim, and Emim. They are the same type of being as the Nephilim mentioned in Genesis 6:4, who symbolize false persuasions, or delusions. Or rather they symbolize those whose delusions about their own importance and superiority caused them not to value anything holy or true, and who infused false thinking with perverse cravings. This symbolism was more than amply demonstrated at that verse (see §581 and the verses quoted there: Numbers 13:33; Deuteronomy 2:10; Isaiah 14:9; 26:14, 19; Psalms 88:10).
The three nations here, along with the Horites on Mount Seir, symbolize various types of persuasive lies. There are many kinds, differentiated not only by the falsity involved but also by the appetite linked with or permeating them, or the appetite from which they spring and flow. People cannot possibly grasp what the different types of persuasive lie are like, when they only barely know that such a thing exists, or that such a thing as an evil craving exists. In the other life, though, such things are arranged into their different categories and subcategories along very clearly drawn lines.
[2] The people who lived before the Flood — particularly the ones called Nephilim — adopted the most dreadful lies as their convictions. These people were so bad that now in the other world, by the force of their persuasions, they rob the spirits they come across of any ability to think. The victims hardly feel as though they are still alive, let alone capable of thinking a valid thought. There is, as I have shown, a sharing of all thoughts in that world [§§315, 549, 969, 1390-1391], so when a force as persuasive as this exerts an influence, it inevitably kills off all power of thought in others.
This was the type of unspeakable nations the Lord fought and defeated in his early youth. Had he not done so through his coming into the world, no one would be left on the planet today, because the Lord governs all of us by means of spirits.
At the present time, these people's fantasies create around them a kind of foggy crag that they are always trying to break free from, without success. (For more information, see §§1265-1272 and many earlier sections.) 1 They and others like them are meant by Isaiah:
The dead will not live, the Rephaim will not rise, because you inflicted punishment on them and destroyed them and wiped out all memory of them. (Isaiah 26:14)
And in David:
Will you do a miracle for the dead? Will the Rephaim arise, will they acclaim you? (Psalms 88:10)
The dead here mean not the dead but the damned.
[3] Some people today (especially those from the Christian world) also have delusions, but their delusions are not as horrendous as those of the pre-Flood people. A convinced belief in falsity can involve both our voluntary and our intellectual sides, as it did in the people who lived before the Flood and in those meant here by the Rephaim, Zuzim, and Emim. When it involves only our intellectual side, however, and rises out of false premises that we confirm in our own mind, it is a very different thing. This kind of conviction is not as strong or as lethal as that of the former people, but in the next life it still troubles other spirits a great deal and in some measure deprives them of the ability to think.
In people on earth, spirits who hold this kind of conviction stimulate only those ideas that tend to support falsity. They leave us incapable of seeing falsity as anything but true, and evil as anything but good. Their aura is what does it. As soon as angels call up any hint of truth, these spirits choke and smother it.
[4] We can tell whether such spirits control us simply by this: If we consider the truth of the Word to be false, if we have proved this to ourselves so firmly that we are blind to any other way of thinking, we can be fairly certain such spirits are present with us and dictating to us. Again, when we convince ourselves that our own personal advantage is good for everyone, when we feel that nothing contributes to the larger good unless it also contributes to our own profit, the evil spirits with us offer so many confirmations that we cannot see otherwise. People who identify all self-interest with the common good (or disguise it as the common good) do the same in the other life with the common good there. 2
Constant, living experience has taught me to recognize that this is what spirits' influence on us is like.
Footnotes:
1. The selections alluded to may be §§581-583, 927:2, and sections describing the final generation of the earliest church, such as §§276:2, 279, 307, 310-311, 562-563, 586 a, 659-662, 792-813, 920:3, 1124. [LHC]
2. During the Enlightenment a significant social theory was on the rise that held that the self-interest of individuals is, in the aggregate, the most effective means of achieving the common good. In this passage, Swedenborg may be offering a corrective to an extreme form of this theory. It is important to note, however, that he is not opposed to the individual gaining wealth in legitimate ways (True Christianity 403:3, 661; Heaven and Hell 528, 535; Divine Providence 217-218, 220:8-11), and that he holds that love of oneself, of wealth, and of personal honor actually perfect people when properly prioritized (True Christianity 394-405). He even conjectures that self-centeredness is capable of being as strong and effective a motivation for being useful to others as a true love of the neighbor and of God (True Christianity 661:15). His main point here seems to be that the love of worldly and self-centered pursuits is utterly hellish when it is dominant and combined with an aggressive and intransigent identification of the common good with one's own personal benefit. Perhaps the most influential of Enlightenment works espousing the theory of self-interest was The Fable of the Bees; or Private Vices, Publick Benefits by Bernard Mandeville (1670-1733), which stirred both great interest and great outrage when it was published in 1714-1728 (Mandeville [1732] 1988). The theory was explicitly condemned by one of Swedenborg's major philosophic sources, the German writer Christian Wolff (1679-1754; see Wolff [1733] 1990, 337). Utilitarianism, as the fully developed theory came to be called, truly flowered only after Swedenborg's death, in the economic works of Adam Smith (1723-1790), and in the philosophies of Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832) and John Stuart Mill (1806-1873). [JSR, SS]
