'And Jehovah said to Moses' means a command. 'Stretch out your hand towards heaven' means attention drawn to heaven, which would then come nearer. 'And there will be hail in all the land of Egypt' means destructive falsity in the natural mind. 'On man and on beast' means interior and exterior good. 'And on every plant of the field in the land of Egypt' means every truth of the Church in the natural mind. 'And Moses stretched out his rod towards heaven' means communication with heaven. 'And Jehovah gave forth voices' means the departure and severance of communication with those governed by good and guided by truth. 'And hail' means those destructive falsities. 'And fire ran down to the earth' means evil desires. 'And He caused hail to rain onto the land of Egypt' means the natural mind, which falsities arising from evil took possession of. 'And there was hail, and at the same time fire running down in the midst of the hail, extremely heavy' means firm beliefs in what is false together with desires for evil. 'Of which there had not been the like in all the land of Egypt' means that such a state of the natural mind did not exist in any others. 'Since it became a nation' means from the day on which it happened that it was able to admit goodness and therefore truth into itself. 'And the hail struck in all the land of Egypt' means that that falsity destroyed the things which were in the natural mind. 'Everything that was in the field' means whatever was an attribute of the Church. 'From man and even to beast' means its good, interior and exterior. 'And the hail struck every plant of the field' means that those falsities destroyed all of the Church's truth. 'And broke every tree of the field' means that they also destroyed all the Church's cognitions of truth and good. 'Only in the land of Goshen, where the children of Israel were, there was no hail' means that they did not destroy anything where those who belonged to the spiritual Church were.

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