731. Obliterating all substance that I have made from the face of the ground means that human self-sufficiency is obliterated, so to speak, when a person comes to life. This can be seen from earlier statements about selfhood [§§154-155, 164]. Our insistence on autonomy is thoroughly evil and false. As long as it maintains its grip, we are dead. However, when we suffer times of trouble, this sense of autonomy is shaken off; that is, it is loosened and mitigated by the truth and goodness we receive from the Lord. In the process, it is brought to life and yet seems to disappear. The fact that it becomes invisible and harmless is symbolized by being obliterated even though it is never obliterated but remains.

The situation is almost like that with black and white. When these two are modified in various ways by rays of light, they turn into beautiful colors, such as blues, yellows, and reds. Through these colors, and depending on the objects they appear in (flowers, for instance), they display themselves as lovely and appealing. Still, they remain inherently and fundamentally black and white.

But since the present verse deals at the same time with the final devastation of the people in the earliest church, obliterating all substance that I have made from the face of the ground also symbolizes those who perished. So does verse 23 below [§§807-811].

The substance that I have made is every trait (or every person) that had a germ of heaven in it (or who was part of the church). As a result, the current verse and verse 23 below use the word ground, symbolizing a person in the church in whom the seed of goodness and truth has been sown. Once evil and falsity had been dispelled, as noted, that seed grew and grew in the people referred to as Noah, although among the pre-Flood people who died it was killed off by tares. ¹

Footnotes:

806. The conclusions follow logically that of all that was on dry land symbolizes people who no longer had any of that life and that they died means that this life expired. And since the whole living force of love and faith had been eradicated, the term dry land appears.

Dry land is a place without water, that is, where there is no longer anything spiritual, let alone heavenly. The conviction that falsity is true destroys any spiritual or heavenly quality by suffocating it, so to speak, as we can all see from much experience, if we pay attention. Once people have laid hold of an opinion, even if it is utterly false, they stick to it so obstinately that they do not want even to hear anything that contradicts it. They positively refuse to be taught, even if you place the truth before their very eyes. This applies still more strongly to those who treat their misguided opinions with a sort of reverential awe. People who rebuff all truth and pervert what they do allow themselves to hear, suffusing it with their fantasies, are like this.

They are the ones symbolized here by the dry land, which has neither water nor grain on it, as in Ezekiel:

I will turn the rivers into dry ground and sell the land into the hand of the evil and strip the land and its abundance. (Ezekiel 30:12)

Turning the rivers into dry ground stands for a condition in which nothing spiritual remains. And in Jeremiah:

Your land has become dry ground. (Jeremiah 44:22)

Dry ground stands for a ruined and devastated land, where nothing true or good remains.