9
και γαρ εγω ανθρωπος ειμι υπο εξουσιαν εχων υπ εμαυτον στρατιωτας και λεγω τουτω πορευθητι και πορευεται και αλλω ερχου και ερχεται και τω δουλω μου ποιησον τουτο και ποιει
Matthew 8:9
Heaven and Hell #575
575. The gnashing of teeth, though, is the constant clash and strife of false convictions with each other (and therefore the warfare of the individuals who hold the false convictions) united to contempt for others, hostility, derision, mockery, and blasphemy. These even break out into various kinds of butchery. Everyone there is defending his or her own false convictions and calling them true. From outside the hells, these clashes and battles sound like gnashing teeth, and they turn into the gnashing of teeth when truths from heaven flow into hell.
In these hells dwell all the people who acknowledged nature and denied the Divine. The people who deliberately convinced themselves are in the deeper hells. Since they cannot accept any ray of light from heaven and can therefore not see anything within themselves, most of them focus on their senses and their bodies. These are people who do not believe anything they cannot see with their eyes and touch with their hands. So for them, all sensory illusions are the truths on which they base their arguments. This is why their arguments sound like the gnashing of teeth. It is because in the spiritual world all false statements grate, and teeth correspond to the outmost aspects of nature and to our own outmost natures, which have to do with our senses and our bodies. 1
On the gnashing of teeth in the hells, see Matthew 8:12; 13:42, 50; 22:13; 24:51; 25:30, and Luke 13:28.
Imibhalo yaphansi:
1. [Swedenborg's footnote] On the correspondence of teeth: Arcana Coelestia 5565-5568. People who are merely sensory correspond to teeth and have hardly any spiritual light: 5565. In the Word, a tooth [reading dens for the obviously erroneous Deus, "God"] refers to the sensory level that is the outmost level of human life: 9052, 9062. Gnashing of teeth in the other life comes from people who give nature credit for everything and credit the Divine with nothing: 5568.
Arcana Coelestia #6379
6379. 'His eyes are red from wine' means that His Intellect or Internal Human is nothing else than good. This is clear from the meaning of 'red' as the good of love - a meaning that is derived from 'fire' and 'blood', which are red, dealt with in 3300 - so that 'red from wine' means that it is nothing else than good; and from the meaning of 'eyes' as the intellect or understanding, dealt with in 2701, 3820, 4403-4421, 4523-4534. And Since the Lord is the subject here, His Internal Human is what is meant here by His Intellect; for His External Human is meant, as now follows, by the words 'teeth white from milk'.
