643. And if anyone will hurt them, thus must he be killed, signifies that according to their endeavor to inflict evil they perish. This is evident from the signification of "will hurt," as being the endeavor to inflict evil, for to will is to endeavor; also from the signification of "to be killed," as being to perish, here in respect to spiritual life, which is destroyed solely by the evils and the falsities of evil, for such are the cause of spiritual death (See above, n. 315, 589). It is here again said "If any will hurt them," because it is meant that everyone perishes according to his wish or endeavor to inflict evil, for it is the will that makes the life of everyone. Everyone perishes according to his wish to hurt "the two witnesses," who are the "two olive trees and the two lampstands," that is, the good of love and charity, and the truth of doctrine and faith, because he is in the opposite will, and the will that is opposite to the good of love and the truth of doctrine is hell in the measure of such opposition; consequently "thus must he be killed," that is, perish, so far as he desires to hurt them. Moreover, every man and spirit is under the Lord's protection, the evil as well as the good; and to him who is under the Lord's protection no evil can happen: for it is the Lord's will that no one should perish or be punished. But so far as anyone is under the Lord's protection he abstains from doing evil, but so far as he does not abstain he removes himself from the Lord's protection, and so far as he so removes himself he is hurt by the evil spirits who are from hell; for infernal spirits have an unceasing desire to do evil to others; and so far as any are outside of the Lord's Divine protection, that is, so far as they do evil, they come into the power of those who do evil to them by inflicting punishment and depriving them of such things as belong to spiritual life. In a word, so far as anyone desires to hurt the goods of love and the truths of doctrine he is "devoured by fire and is killed," that is, he is possessed by evils and the falsities of evil, and so far he spiritually dies, and this comes to pass not from the Divine but from the evil itself that he does.

Wine played a key role in the ancient world, where safe, reliable water sources were scarce. It could be stored for long periods of time; if lightly fermented it was rich in sugar content; it was high in mineral content; it tasted good and generally had intoxicating qualities. Thus it was a valuable commodity and treated with reverence.

Wine is, of course, made from grapes. Grapes – sweet, juicy, nutritious and full of energy-rich fructose – represent the Lord's own exquisite desire to be good to us. That's powerful stuff! But grapes have a short shelf life; you might eat a bunch for a burst of energy, but you can't exactly carry them around with you for long-term sustenance. And so it is with desires for good: They tend to come to us in energizing bursts, but fade away fairly quickly. We need something more stable and lasting.

At some point in the distant past people figured out that if you squeeze the juice from the grapes and let it ferment, the result is a liquid that offers that stability: wine. The spiritual meaning works the same way; if we examine our desires for good, try to understand and think about how to apply them, what we will get are concepts about what good really is, how to recognize it and how to make it happen. And just like the wine, these ideas offer stability and portability. For instance, finding a wallet full of cash on the sidewalk might severely test our desire to be honest, but the idea that "you shall not steal" is pretty hard to shake.

Wine, then, on the deepest level represents divine truth flowing from divine goodness – the true principles that arise from the fact that the Lord loves us and desires everything good for us.

Wine comes in many varieties, though, and is used in many ways. Depending on context it can represent truth that arises from a desire for good on much more mundane levels. You want your children to be healthy so you make them brush their teeth even though they complain and it's a pain in the neck; the truth that brushing their teeth is good for them is wine on a very day-to-day level.

In some cases wine can also actually represent good things that arise from true ideas, something of a reverse from its inmost meaning. This happens when we are in transitional stages, setting higher ideas and principles above our less-worthy desires in an effort to reshape our actions. In that case our principles are the things being squeezed, with good habits the result.

There is also, of course, a darker side to wine. There is a good deal of debate about just how much alcohol wine had in Biblical times, and some of it may indeed have been more like concentrated grape juice. But there are also many references to wine and drunkeness, so some of it, at least, was fairly potent.

On a spiritual level, getting drunk on wine represents relying too much on our ideas, taking logic to such an extreme that we forget the good things we were trying to achieve in the first place.

(Referencat: Apocalypse Explained 376 [1-40], 1152; Apocalypse Revealed 316, 635; Arcana Coelestia 1071 [1-5], 1727, 3580 [1-4], 5117 [7], 6377, 10137 [1-10]; The Apocalypse Explained 329 [2-4]; The New Jerusalem and its Heavenly Doctrine 219)