Seven, as in Revelation 15:1, signifies everything in an universal sense. The number 'seven' was considered holy, as is well known, because of the six days of creation, and the seventh, which is the celestial self, where peace, rest, and the Sabbath is. The number seven occurs so frequently in the rites of the Jewish church and is held holy everywhere.

So times were divided into seven, longer and shorter intervals, and were called weeks, like the great intervals of times till the coming of the Messiah, in Daniel 9:24-25. The time of seven years is called 'a week' by Laban and Jacob, as in Genesis 29:27-28. So wherever the number seven occurs, it is considered holy and sacred, as in Psalm 119:164, and in Isaiah 30:26.

As the periods of a person's regeneration are distinguished into six, prior to the seventh, or the celestial self, so the times of vastation are also distinguished, until nothing celestial is left. This was represented by the many captivities of the Jews, and by the last Babylonian captivity, which lasted seven decades, or seventy years. This was also represented by Nebuchadnezzar, in Daniel 4:16, 22, 29. It also refers to the vastation of the end times, in Revelation 15:1, 7-8. They should 'tread the holy city under foot, forty and two months, or six times seven,' as in Revelation 11:2 and Revelation 5:1. So the severity and increments of punishment were expressed by the number seven, as in Leviticus 26:18, 21, 24, 28 and Psalm 79:12.

(Odkazy: Apocalypse Explained 5, 7-8, 15; Arcana Coelestia 395; Daniel 9, 9:24, 9:25; Psalms 119)

718. 'Male and mate' ¹ means that truths were joined to goods. This is clear from the meaning of 'man' (vir) as truth which belongs to the understanding, and from the meaning of 'wife' as good which belongs to the will, both dealt with already. This consequently means that with man neither the smallest area of thought nor the smallest area of affection or activity has any existence at all unless it contains some marriage of understanding and will. In the absence of such a marriage nothing ever comes forth or is produced. The very organs of man's body, in their complex and in their simple parts, and indeed in the simplest parts of all, contain that which is passive and that which is active. And if these were not coupled together, like man and wife in marriage, they could not even be there, let alone produce anything. The same applies to the whole realm of nature. The source and origin of these enduring marriages lies in the heavenly marriage by means of which also the idea of the Lord's kingdom is stamped on everything in the whole realm of nature, both on animate beings and on inanimate.

Poznámky pod čarou: