714. 16:21 And great hail from heaven about the weight of a talent fell upon people. This symbolizes dreadful and atrocious falsities, by which every truth in the Word and so in the church was destroyed.
Hail symbolizes falsity destroying truth and goodness, as may be seen in no. 399 above. And because the hail here is called great hail about the weight of a talent, it symbolizes dreadful and atrocious falsities, by which every truth and good in the Word and so in the church was destroyed.
It is said to be the weight of a talent because a talent was the largest weight of both silver and gold, and silver symbolizes truth, and gold goodness, and the two in an opposite sense, falsity and evil (no. 211).
That the hail is said to have fallen from heaven upon people is said in accordance with appearances, in terms of which and their correspondences the literal sense of the Word was written. The case here is similar to that in what we were told before regarding the plagues, that angels from heaven poured out the plagues upon men, when in fact truths and goods descended from the Lord which in people below were turned into falsities and evils (no. 673).
In the case of such people in the spiritual world, too, when they are engaged in reasoning on the basis of falsities against the Word's truths, hail sometimes appears to fall, and in some cases, brimstone and fire; and because these things appear in the atmosphere above them, as though coming from heaven, therefore we are told in accordance with the appearance that the hail described fell from heaven.
