1742. 'Give me the people and take the acquisitions for yourself' ¹ means that He was to give them life and they would not care about anything else. This is clear from the meaning of 'soul' as life, dealt with already in 1000, 1005, 1040, and from the meaning of 'acquisitions' as all the other things that do not belong properly to life, dealt with immediately below.

[2] The life that evil spirits have and love desperately is the life belonging to the desires that derive from self-love and love of the world - consequently the life that goes with hatred, revenge, and cruelty; and they imagine that no delight can exist in any other kind of life. They are like men, for they have been men and retain this conviction from their life when they were men. They centre all life in the delight that accompanies such desires; indeed they know no other than that this life is the only life, and that when they lose it they will die completely. The nature of the life they love is clear from those like them in the next life. There it is converted into a life that stinks most disgustingly, yet what is remarkable, they perceive that stench as something most delightful, as becomes clear from what has been told from experience in 820, 954.

[3] The same applies to the devils who, having been cast out of the demoniac by the Lord, begged for fear of their lives to be sent into the pigs, Mark 5:7-13. That these were people who during their lifetime had surrendered themselves to foul avarice becomes clear from the fact that such people seem to themselves in the next life to spend their time among pigs. They do so because the life of pigs corresponds to avarice, and therefore they find it delightful, as is clear in what has been told from experience in 939.

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1005. That 'requiring your blood with your souls' means that violence done to charity will punish itself, 'blood' meaning violence, and 'souls' people who do violence, is clear from what comes before and after, and also from the meaning of 'blood' in the contrary sense, as well as from the meaning of 'soul' in the contrary sense. First from what comes before in the previous verse referring to the eating of blood, which, as shown, meant profanation, and from what comes after in the next verse referring to the shedding of blood, it is consequently clear that the subject here is the state and the punishment of one who mixes holy things with unholy. It is further clear from the meaning of 'blood' in the contrary sense, in that 'blood' in the genuine sense means that which is celestial and in reference to a regenerate spiritual person means charity - which constitutes the celestial in his case - but in the contrary sense means violence done to charity, and therefore that which is contrary to charity, namely all hatred, all revenge, all cruelty, and especially profanation, as becomes clear from the places in the Word that are quoted in 374, 376. Finally it is clear from the meaning of 'soul' in the contrary sense, in that in the Word 'soul' means life, in general, and so everybody who lives, but also means, since a person's life is by nature what he himself is, any individual who does violence. This may be confirmed from many parts of the Word, but for the moment let solely the following from Moses do so,

He who eats blood, I will set My face ¹ against the soul eating blood, and I will cut him off from among his people, for the soul of the flesh is in the blood, and I have given it upon the altar, to make atonement for your souls, for the blood itself will make atonement by reason of the soul. Leviticus 17:10-11, 14.

Here 'soul' stands for life in three different senses, as it does many times elsewhere. The fact that violence done to charity will punish itself will be clear from what follows.

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