Arcana Coelestia (Elliott) n. 7357

Previous Number Next Number Next Translation See Latin 

7357. 'And onto you, and onto your people, and onto all your servants the frogs will rise up' means that the reasonings arising from falsities will be in every single part. This is clear from what has been stated above in 7355. Every single person who is in the land of Egypt is meant by 'Pharaoh, his people, and his servants', thus falsities in every single part (it has often been shown above that falsities are meant by 'Pharaoh and the Egyptians'). It should be recognized that those in hell, from whom the truths which they knew in the world have been taken away, cannot do anything other than speak falsities. This accounts for what happens when they appear in the world of spirits - when anyone of their sort speaks, what he says is known instantly to be false. The upright in the next life know it from ordinary experience. The fact that such people speak nothing but falsity is also plain from the Lord's words in John,

You are from your father the devil, and the desires of your father you will to do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and has not stood in the truth because the truth is not in him. When he speaks a lie he speaks from the things that are his own, for he is the teller of a lie and the father of it. John 8:44.

For everyone speaks in keeping with the impulses of his love; no one can speak contrary to them unless pretence, hypocrisy, fraudulence, or deceitfulness prompt him to do so, as is usually the case with the evil when they speak truths. But these truths which they speak are nevertheless falsities with them. On the other hand those who are guided by truth because they are motivated by good cannot do other than speak truths.


This page is part of the Writings of Emanuel Swedenborg

© 2000-2001 The Academy of the New Church