10222. A shekel of twenty gerahs. That this signifies all things of good, is evident from the signification of “twenty,” as likewise being all things, and the remains of good, as also what is holy. (That it denotes all things and hence what is full, see n. 9641; also the remains of good, n. 2280; and what is holy, n. 4759, 7842, 7903.) For when said of the Lord, “twenty” signifies what is His own, which is what is Holy itself (n. 4176); which shows why a shekel contained twenty gerahs or oboli, and why it is called a “shekel of holiness” in this and other passages (as Leviticus 27:3; Numbers 3:47, 50; 7:13, (Numbers 7:13) 19, 25, 31, 37, 49, 55, 61, 67, 73; 18:16). That the shekel was a weight both of silver and of gold, see Genesis 24:22; Exodus 38:24; Ezekiel 4:10; 45:12.

3108. These two verses treat of the initiation of truth into good; but what is the nature of this initiation does not easily fall into the idea of thought with anyone who has been enlightened only by such things as are of the light of the world, and not at the same time by such things as are of the light of heaven, from which light the things which are of the light of the world may themselves be enlightened. They who are not in good, and thence in faith, have no other ideas of thought than those which have been formed from objects of the light of the world. These do not know that there is anything spiritual, nor indeed what the rational is in the genuine sense, but only the natural to which they attribute all things; and this is the reason why these things which are said in the internal sense concerning the initiation of truth into good, are to them too remote to appear to amount to anything; when yet to those who are in the light of heaven these are among their precious things. As regards the initiation of truth into good the case is this: Before truth has been initiated and rightly conjoined, it is indeed with man, but it has not been made as it were of him, or as his own; but as soon as it is being initiated into his good, it is appropriated to him; and it then vanishes from his external memory, and passes into the internal memory; or what is the same, it vanishes from the natural or external man, and passes into the rational or internal man, and puts on the very man, and makes his human, that is, his quality as to the human. Such is the case with all truth that is being conjoined with a man’s good; such also is the case with the falsity that is being conjoined with evil which he calls good; but the difference is that the former opens the rational, and so makes the man rational; whereas the latter closes the rational and makes the man irrational; although he seems to himself, in the darkness in which he then is, to be pre-eminently rational.