The specific meaning of “hide” in the Bible has a lot to do with context – are good people hiding from bad people? Are bad people hiding from God? Or is an object being hidden? What kind of object?
In general, though, “hiding” represents creating a separation, usually between things that are good and things that are evil, or between things that are true and things that are false. Often this is for protection, with good things being safeguarded and preserved – though often that is flipped, with the evil fleeing from the presence of the Lord because they can’t stand the aura of love and have to shut themselves away.
Passages from Swedenborg
Apocalypse Explained (Tansley) n. 410
410. Hid themselves in the caves and in the rocks of the mountains. That this signifies those things destroyed by evils of life and by the falsities thence, is plain from the signification of hiding themselves as denoting their being destroyed, namely, internal and external goods and truths, or those that are in the natural and spiritual man, these being signified by the kings of the earth, the great men, the rich men, the chief captains, the mighty men, and by every bondservant and every freeman, as has been shown above. Hence it follows that by they hid themselves is signified that those things were destroyed, the things which are destroyed being also in concealment.
Arcana Coelestia (Elliott) n. 6848
6848. ‘And Moses hid his face’ means that interior things were protected. This is clear from the meaning of ‘face’ as interior things, dealt with in 1999, 2434, 3527, 4066, 4796, 4797, 5102. The fact that ‘hiding’ means protecting follows from the train of thought in the internal sense, for it says that ‘he hid his face, for he was afraid to look at God’, meaning for fear that internal things should suffer harm from the presence of the Divine itself. The implications of this will be stated in what follows immediately below.
Arcana Coelestia (Elliott) n. 4552
4552. ‘And Jacob hid them under the oak which was by Shechem’ means an eternal casting away. This is clear from the meaning of ‘hiding’ as casting away and burying as dead, and from the meaning of ‘under the oak’ as for ever, for being a tree that lives to a very great age, ‘the oak’ meant, when anything was hidden under it, that which is everlasting.
Arcana Coelestia (Elliott) n. 218
218. Verse 8 And they heard Jehovah God’s voice going to and fro in the garden in the breeze of the daytime; and the man hid himself, and so did his wife, from the face of Jehovah God, in the middle of the tree of the garden.
‘Jehovah God’s voice going to and fro in the garden’ means a dictate which filled them with fear. This dictate is the residue they had of perception. ‘The breeze, or breath,* of the daytime’ means a time when the Church still had a residue of perception. ‘Hiding themselves from the face of Jehovah God’ is being afraid of this dictate, as people conscious of evil normally are. ‘The middle of the tree of the garden in which they hid themselves’ means natural good; that which is Inmost is called ‘the middle’, and perception a tree’, as stated already. But because only a little perception remained ‘tree’ is used in the singular, as though only one were left.
Arcana Coelestia (Potts) n. 387
387. That to be “hid from Thy faces” signifies to be separated from all the good of the faith of love, is evident from the signification of the “faces of Jehovah.” The “face of Jehovah” as before said, is mercy, from which proceed all the goods of the faith of love, and therefore the goods of faith are here signified by His “faces.”
Apocalypse Revealed (Rogers) n. 339
339. And they said to the mountains and rocks, “Fall on us and hide us from the face of Him who sits on the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb!” (6:16) This symbolizes affirmations of evil by falsity and of falsity springing from evil, until they did not acknowledge anything of the Lord’s Divinity.
Mountains symbolize loves of evil, thus evils themselves (no. 336), and rocks symbolize falsities of faith. Falling on these people and hiding them means, symbolically, protecting them from influx from heaven. And because this is accomplished by affirmations of evil by means of falsity, and of falsity springing from evil, therefore this is the symbolic meaning. Hiding from the face of Him who sits on the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb means, symbolically, until they no longer acknowledge anything of the Lord’s Divinity. He who sits on the throne means the Lord’s Divinity from which all else springs, and the Lamb means the Lord Himself in respect to His Divine humanity. The Lord was upon the throne in both respects, as we have shown above.*
The verse says, from His face and wrath, because all those people who live in caves and rocks do not dare to set foot out of them, or even to stick out a finger, on account of the torment and torture they experience if they do. The reason is that they hate the Lord, even so much that they cannot speak His name. And the Lord’s Divine atmosphere pervades everything, which they cannot drive away from themselves except by affirmations of evil by means of falsity, and of falsity springing from evil. It is the delights of evil that cause this.