339. [verse 16] 'And they were saying to the mountains and the rocks, Fall upon us, and hide us away from the face of the One sitting upon the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb' signifies confirmations of evil by means of untruth, and of untruth derived from evils even until they should not acknowledge any Divine of the Lord. By 'the mountains' are signified the loves of evil, thus evils (n. 336); and by 'the rocks' are signified the untruths of faith. By 'fall upon' them and 'hide' them is signified to defend against influx out of heaven; and because this is done by confirmations of evil by means of untruth, and of untruth derived from evil, therefore these are signified. By 'hide' themselves 'away from the face of the One sitting upon the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb' is signified until they were not acknowledging any Divine of the Lord. By 'the One sitting upon the throne' is understood the Lord's Divine from which [all things exist], and by 'the Lamb', Himself as to the Divine Human; for the Lord as to both [the Divine and the Divine Human] was upon the throne, as has been shown above. It is said 'from His face' and 'from His wrath' because all those who are in the caves and rocks dare not set foot out of them, nor even thrust a finger forth, on account of the pain and torture if they do so. This is because they hate the Lord, even to their not being able to name Him; and because the Divine sphere of the Lord fills all things, and they are not able to remove this from themselves except by confirmations of evil by untruth, and of untruth derived from evil. The delights of the evils bring this to pass. [2] Similar things are signified by these [words] in Hosea:-
They shall say to the mountains, Cover us, and to the hills, Fall upon us Hosea x 8;
and in Luke:-
Then shall they begin to say to the mountains, Fall upon us, and to the hills, Hide us Luke xxiii 30.
That this is the spiritual sense of those words cannot appear in the letter, but it does appear in the spiritual sense in consequence of the fact that while the last judgment is being carried through, then those who are in evil and want to be in good suffer hard things to begin with, whereas they suffer less severely who confirm themselves in their evils by means of untruths; for the latter cover the evil over with the untruths, but the former lay their evil bare, and then [the latter] do not endure the Divine influx, as follows [in the exposition]. The caves and caverns into which they rush are correspondences.
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