892. "And murderers, the sexually licentious, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars." This symbolizes all those people who have no regard for the Ten Commandments, and do not refrain from any of the evils named there as sins, and therefore live caught up in them.

What is symbolically meant on three levels, natural, spiritual and celestial, by these four of the Ten Commandments - namely, you shall not murder, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not steal, and you shall not bear false witness - may be seen in The Doctrine of Life for the New Jerusalem, 62-91. Consequently there is no need to expound them here again.

However, in place of the seventh commandment not to steal, listed here are sorcerers and idolaters, and sorcerers symbolize people who seek truths, which they falsify in order to use them to defend falsities and evils, as those do who take this truth, that no one can do good of himself, and use it to defend faith alone. For this is a type of spiritual theft. Moreover, what enchantments are may be seen in no. 462 above. Idolaters symbolize people who institute worship, or take part in worship, not from the Word, thus not from the Lord, but from their own intelligence (no. 459), as those do also who, on the basis of a single statement of Paul's, ¹ wrongly interpreted, and not on the basis of any of the Lord's words, have fabricated the whole doctrine of the church; and this, too, is a type of spiritual theft. Liars symbolize people caught up in falsities arising from evil (no. 924).

Notas de rodapé:

459. And idols of gold, silver, brass, stone, and wood. This symbolically means that thus they engage in worship founded on nothing but falsities.

Idols in the Word symbolize falsities in worship, and therefore worshiping them symbolizes worship founded on falsities. Worshiping idols of gold, silver, brass, stone, and wood, then, symbolizes worship founded on falsities of every kind, and when taken in combination, worship founded on nothing but falsities. Moreover, the materials, figures, and garments of the idols among ancient peoples represented the falsities of religion on which they founded their worship. Idols of gold symbolized falsities regarding matters pertaining to God; idols of silver, falsities regarding matters pertaining to the spirit; idols of brass, falsities regarding charity; idols of stone, falsities regarding faith; and idols of wood, falsities regarding good works.

All of these falsities are held by people who do not repent, that is, who do not refrain from evils as being sins against God.

[2] Idols, which were carved and cast images, have this symbolic meaning in the spiritual sense in the following passages:

Everyone has been made stupid by knowledge; every metalsmith is has been put to shame by a carved image; for his cast image is a falsehood, and there is no breath in them. They are futile, a work of errors; in the time of their visitation they shall perish. (Jeremiah 10:14-15; 51:17-18)

(Carved images are) the work of the hands of the workman... They do not speak... They are both foolish and stupid; the wood is a worthless teacher... They are all the work of skillful men. (Jeremiah 10:3-5, 8-10)

What profit is the carved image, that its maker has carved it, ...and a teacher of lies, that the maker of the lie trusts in it...? ...in it there is no breath. (Habakkuk 2:18-19)

In that day a man will cast away to the moles and bats his idols of silver and his idols of gold, which they made for themselves to worship... (Isaiah 2:18, 20)

...they made for themselves cast images of their silver, idols according to their skill, all of it the work of craftsmen. (Hosea 13:2)

I will sprinkle clean water on you, that you may be cleansed... from all your uncleanness and from all your idols. (Ezekiel 36:25)

Clean waters are truths; idols are falsities in worship.

You shall judge unclean the covering of your graven images of silver, and the attire of your cast images of gold. You will throw them away as a menstrual cloth; you will call it excrement. (Isaiah 30:22)

[3] Falsities in religion and thus in worship are precisely what are symbolically meant by the gods of gold, silver, bronze, iron, wood, and stone that Belshazzar, king of Babylon, praised (i.e., worshiped) when with his great men, wives and concubines he drank wine from the vessels of gold and silver taken from the temple in Jerusalem, on which account he was driven from mankind and became as a beast (Daniel 5:1-5ff.).

And so also in many other places, as in Isaiah 10:10-11; 21:9; 31:7; 40:19-20; 41:29; 42:17; 48:5, Leviticus 26:30.

Properly speaking, idols symbolize falsities in worship springing from people's own intelligence. How a person fashions them and afterward adapts them so that they appear to be true is fully described in Isaiah 44:9-20.