"Age" is used in slightly different ways depending on the context, and those differences are reflected in the word’s spiritual meanings. All variations, though, reflect the fact that in there is no time in spiritual reality, and what we experience as time in the physical world reflects changes in the states of life and love in the spiritual world. People’s ages, when mentioned in the Bible, represent the spiritual states those people were in, and also spiritual states we go through in our development. An "age" as a measurement of time represents the duration of a particular spiritual state, which could be temporary or eternal. When referring to the "consummation of the age," "age" represents the pre-eminence of a particular church or belief system, which has turned to evil and must be destroyed to make way for the next. When used as "this age" – some translations of the Bible talk about "sons of this age" – it represents physical life as opposed to life in heaven. Finally, when used as "ages of ages" it represents a permanent spiritual state which is unchanging.

In Genesis 15:15; Exodus 30:21, to be buried in a good old age signifies to pass from an obscure life to a clear one. (Arcana Coelestia 1854, 10248, Arcana Coelestia 10248, Arcana Coelestia 1854)

1854. 'You will be buried at a good old age' means the enjoyment of all goods by those who are the Lord's. This is clear from the fact that people who die and are buried do not die but pass over from an obscure life into one that is bright. For death of the body is but a continuation and also a perfecting of life, when those who are the Lord's enter for the first time into the enjoyment of all goods. That enjoyment is meant by 'a good old age'. The expressions 'they died', 'were buried', and 'were gathered to their fathers' occur quite often, but they do not carry the same meaning in the internal sense as in the sense of the letter. In the internal sense it is the things which belong to life after death, and which are eternal, that are meant, whereas in the sense of the letter it is those which belong to life in the world and which are temporal.

[2] Consequently, when such expressions occur, those who see into the internal sense, as angels do, have no thoughts of such things as have to do with death and burial but with such as have to do with the continuation of life; for they look upon death as nothing else than a casting off of the things which belong to merely earthly matter and to time, and as the continuing of life proper. Indeed they do not know what death is, for death does not enter into any of their thinking. It is the same with people's ages. By the phrase used here, 'at a good old age', angels have no perception at all of old age; indeed they do not know what old age is, for they themselves are constantly moving towards the life of youth and early manhood. It is life such as this, consequently the celestial and spiritual things belonging to it, that are meant when the expression 'a good old age' and others like it occur in the Word.