245. 'He said to the serpent, Cursed are you, more than every beast and more than every wild animal of the field' means that the sensory part turned away from the heavenly and towards the bodily, and in so doing brought condemnation, that is, a curse, upon itself. This becomes quite clear from the internal sense of the Word. Jehovah God or the Lord never curses anyone, is never angry with anyone, never leads anyone into temptation, and never punishes, let alone curses anybody. It is the devil's crew who do such things. Such things cannot possibly come from the fountain of mercy, peace, and goodness. The reason why here and elsewhere in the Word it is said that Jehovah God not only turns His face away, is angry, punishes, and tempts, but also slays and even curses, is that people may believe that the Lord rules over and disposes every single thing in the whole world, including evil itself, punishments, and temptations. And after people have grasped this very general concept, they may then learn in what ways He rules and disposes, and how He converts into good the evil inherent in punishment and the evil inherent in temptation. In teaching and learning the Word very general concepts have to come first; and therefore the sense of the letter is full of such general concepts.

The sun in the Bible represents the Lord, with its heat representing His love and its light representing His wisdom. “Daytime,” then, represents a state in which we are turned toward the Lord, receiving His love and being enlightened by His truth. And “nighttime,” obviously, represents states in which we are turned away from the Lord, left cold and blind to the truth. The most common word used for it in the New Christian theology is “obscurity.” The darkness is not absolute, of course. The light of the moon represents the understanding we can have based on facts and our own intelligence. But while the moon reflects some of the sun's light, it offers almost no heat, so this kind of understanding is a cold one, without the warmth of love. And at its darkest and coldest, night represents a state of judgment. This happens when a person -- or a church -- becomes so mired in evil and falsity that there is no light or heat. The Lord can then step in, separate the good from the evil, consign the evil to hell and begin rebuilding based on the remnant that is still good. Drastic as that sounds, it is something that we all go through repeatedly in various aspects of our loves, so that we can be rid of what is evil and let the Lord rebuild us as angels.