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Daniel 8

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1 In the third year of the rule of Belshazzar the king, a vision was seen by me, Daniel, after the one I saw at first.

2 And I saw in the vision; and when I saw it, I was in the strong town Shushan, which is in the country of Elam; and in the vision I was by the water-door of the Ulai.

3 And lifting up my eyes, I saw, there before the stream, a male sheep with two horns: and the two horns were high, but one was higher than the other, the higher one coming up last.

4 I saw the sheep pushing to the west and to the north and to the south; and no beasts were able to keep their place before him, and no one was able to get people out of his power; but he did whatever his pleasure was and made himself great.

5 And while I was giving thought to this, I saw a he-goat coming from the west over the face of all the earth without touching the earth: and the he-goat had a great horn between his eyes.

6 And he came to the two-horned sheep which I saw before the stream, rushing at him in the heat of his power.

7 And I saw him come right up to the sheep, and he was moved with wrath against him, attacking the sheep so that his two horns were broken; and the sheep had not strength to keep his place before him, but was pushed down on the earth and crushed under his feet: and there was no one to get the sheep out of his power.

8 And the he-goat became very great: and when he was strong, the great horn was broken, and in its place came up four other horns turned to the four winds of heaven.

9 And out of one of them came another horn, a little one, which became very great, stretching to the south and to the east and to the beautiful land.

10 And it became great, even as high as the army of heaven, pulling down some of the army, even of the stars, to the earth and crushing them under its feet.

11 It made itself great, even as great as the lord of the army; and by it the regular burned offering was taken away, and the place overturned and the holy place made waste.

12 ... against the regular burned offering; and ... crushed down to the earth, and it did its pleasure and things went well for it.

13 Then there came to my ears the voice of a holy one talking; and another holy one said to that certain one who was talking, How long will the vision be while the regular burned offering is taken away, and the unclean thing causing fear is put up, and the holy place crushed under foot?

14 And he said to him, For two thousand, three hundred evenings and mornings; then the holy place will be made clean.

15 And it came about that when I, Daniel, had seen this vision, I had a desire for the sense of it to be unfolded; and I saw one before me in the form of a man.

16 And the voice of a man came to my ears between the sides of the Ulai, crying out and saying, Gabriel, make the vision clear to this man.

17 So he came and took his place near where I was; and when he came, I was full of fear and went down on my face: but he said to me, Let it be clear to you, O son of man; for the vision has to do with the time of the end.

18 Now while he was talking to me, I went into a deep sleep with my face to the earth: but touching me, he put me on my feet where I had been.

19 And he said, See, I will make clear to you what is to come in the later time of the wrath: for it has to do with the fixed time of the end.

20 The sheep which you saw with two horns, they are the kings of Media and Persia.

21 And the he-goat is the king of Greece: and the great horn between his eyes is the first king.

22 And as for that which was broken, in place of which four came up, four kingdoms will come up from his nation, but not with his power.

23 And in the later years of their kingdom, when their evil doings have become complete, there will come up a king full of pride and expert in dark sayings.

24 And his power will be great, and he will be purposing strange things. And all will go well for him and he will do his pleasure; and he will send destruction on the strong ones.

25 And his designs will be turned against the holy people, causing deceit to do well in his hand; in his heart he will make himself great, and send destruction on numbers who are living unconscious of their danger; and he will put himself up against the prince of princes; but he will be broken, though not by men's hands.

26 And the vision of evenings and mornings which has been talked of is true: and keep the vision secret; for it has to do with the far-off future.

27 And I, Daniel, was ill for some days; then I got up and did the king's business: and I was full of wonder at the vision, but no one was able to give the sense of it.

   

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Arcana Coelestia # 10135

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10135. 'And you shall offer the other lamb between the evenings' means a similar removal of evils in a state of light and love in the external man. This is clear from the meaning of 'offering a lamb', or sacrificing it, as being removed from evils by means of the good of innocence from the Lord, as immediately above in 10134; and from the meaning of 'between the evenings' as in a state of light and love in the external man. In the Word 'evening' means a state involving interior things when the truths of faith are set in obscurity, and forms of the good of love are in some coldness; for angels experience different states of love and light, just as in the world different times of day - morning, midday, evening, night or twilight prior to morning, and morning again - give way to one another. When the angels experience a state of love, to them it is morning, and the Lord appears before them as the rising Sun. When they experience a state of light, to them it is midday. When however they experience a state of light set in obscurity, to them it is evening; and when after this they experience a state of love set in obscurity or some coldness, for them it is night, or rather the twilight before morning.

[2] Such states experienced by the angels follow unceasingly one after another, and serve unceasingly to make them more perfect. But those changes are not due to the Sun there, to its rising and setting, but to the state of the interiors within the angels themselves; for as with people in the world they have a desire at one time to turn towards their internal interests, at another towards their external ones. When they turn towards internal interests they experience a state of love and consequently of light in clearness, and when they turn towards external interests they experience a state of love and consequently of light set in obscurity; for what is external is such, compared with what is internal. This is the origin of the changes of state experienced by angels. The reason why they have such states and such changes is that the Sun of heaven, which in that world is the Lord, is the Divine Love itself. Therefore the heat radiating from it is the good of love, and the light from it is the truth of faith. For everything radiating from that Sun has life, unlike the things radiating from the sun in the world, which are dead.

[3] From this it becomes clear what heavenly heat is and what heavenly light is, also why it is that 'heat', 'flame', and 'fire' in the Word mean the good of love, 'light' and its 'brightness' the truth of faith, and 'the sun' the Lord Himself in respect of Divine Love.

The Lord in heaven is the Sun, see 3636, 3643, 4321(end), 5097, 7078, 7083, 7171, 7173, 8812.

The heat from it is the good of love, 3338, 3339, 3636, 3693, 4018, 5215, 6032, 6314.

The light from that Sun is Divine Truth, the source of faith, intelligence, and wisdom, see the places referred to in 9548, 9684.

From all this it now becomes clear what 'morning' and what 'evening' mean.

[4] But it should be recognized that in the present verse 'the morning' implies midday as well, and evening early morning twilight as well; for when the words 'morning and evening' are used in the Word an entire day is meant, so that 'morning' includes midday, and 'evening' night or twilight. This explains why 'the morning' in the present verse means a state of love and also of light in clearness, that is, in the internal man, and 'the evening' a state of light, as well as of love in obscurity, that is, in the external man.

[5] The fact that 'between the evenings' is not used to mean the period of time between the evening of one day and the evening of the next day, but the time between evening and morning, thus all of the night or twilight, is evident from the consideration that the continual burnt offering of a lamb was presented not only in the evening but also in the morning. From this it becomes clear that something similar is meant elsewhere by 'between the evenings', for example, where it says that the Passover should be kept between the evenings, Exodus 12:6; Numbers 9:5, 11, which is explained in yet another place by the following words,

You shall sacrifice the Passover in the evening when the sun goes down, at the fixed time of the departure from Egypt. After that you shall cook and eat it in the place which Jehovah your God will have chosen; and in the morning you shall turn 1 and go into your tents. Deuteronomy 16:6-7.

[6] The fact that 'evening' in general means a state of light shining in obscurity is clear in Jeremiah,

Arise, and let us go up into the south. Woe to us, for the day goes away, for the shadows of evening are set at an angle! Arise, and let us go up at night, and let us destroy the palaces. Jeremiah 6:4-5.

Here 'evening' and 'night' mean the last times of the Church, when all matters of faith and love have been destroyed. In Zechariah,

There will be one day, which is known to Jehovah, when around evening time there will be light. On that day living waters will go out from Jerusalem. And Jehovah will be King over all the earth. Zechariah 14:7-9.

This refers to the Lord's Coming. The end of the Church is meant by 'evening time'; 'light' is the Lord's Divine Truth. A similar example occurs in Daniel,

The holy one said to me, Up to the evening, [when it is becoming] the morning, two thousand three hundred times. Daniel 8:13-14.

  
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Thanks to the Swedenborg Society for the permission to use this translation.