8298. 'They sought a deep place like lead' means that evils drew them down to lower levels like heavy objects in the world. This is clear from the meaning of 'a deep place' as lower levels and the hells in respect of evils, dealt with in 8279, so that 'seeking a deep place' is being drawn down by evils to those places. For their own evils cause the evil to fall, like heavy objects in the world, down towards the hells, see 8279. The expression 'like lead' is used because 'lead' means evil. But verse 5 above stated that 'they went down into deep places of the sea like a stone' because 'a stone' at that point means falsity. Both are heavy, both falsity and evil, and therefore they both fall downwards. Nevertheless evil is what creates heaviness in the spiritual sense and so is what falls as if by gravity. In itself falsity is not heavy; it is so only as a result of the evil that is present in it. For falsity by itself has no weight at all, but acquires it from evil, so that it falls downwards.
[2] It should be recognized that all metals mean good or else truth, and in the contrary sense evil or else falsity. Being less noble than all other metals 'lead' means evil at the lowest level, such as evil belonging to the exterior natural, but in the good sense it means good at that same level; as in Jeremiah,
They are all arch-rebels,a disparagers, bronze and iron; they are all corrupters. The bellows have become hot, the lead has been consumed by the fire; he has thoroughly melted it in vain, for the evil have not been purged out.b [People] will call them rejected silver, because Jehovah has rejected them. Jer 6:28-30.
And in Ezekiel,
Son of man, the house of Israel has become dross to Me; they are all bronze, and tin, and iron, and lead, in the midst of a furnace. They have become the dross of silver. Ezek 22:18.
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