862. That 'it happened at the end of forty days' means the duration of the former state, and the beginning of the one that followed, is clear from the meaning of 'forty', see 730, where, the subject being temptation, the phrase 'forty days and forty nights' was used, which meant the duration of temptation. Here, since the subject is the state following temptation, 'forty days' is mentioned but not forty nights. The reason is that charity now starts to appear, which in the Word is compared to the day and is called the day. Faith however which precedes but has not yet been so joined to charity is compared to the night and is called the night, as in Genesis 1:16, and elsewhere in the Word. Faith is also called 'the night' in the Word because it receives its light from charity, just as the moon does from the sun. Faith is therefore also compared to the moon and is called the moon; and love or charity is compared to the sun and is called the sun. 'Forty days', or the duration of time meant by them, refers both to the things that precede and to those that follow; hence the statement 'at the end of forty days', which accordingly means both the duration of the previous state, and the beginning of the one being described now. This then begins the description of the second state following temptation of the member of this Church.

6465. 'And was gathered to his peoples' means that [spiritual good] was within the forms of good and the truths of the natural which sprang from itself. This is clear from what is said above in 6451, where similar words occur; see what has been brought forward there about the rise and the life of spiritual good, which is 'Israel', within the forms of good and the truths of the lower natural, which are 'his sons' and 'the twelve tribes'. To take further the idea of the rise of interior things within exterior ones, it should be recognized that all things, not only those with the human being but also those in the entire natural order, come into existence through a series of formations, so that posterior things are brought into existence by means of formations from prior things. Consequently each formation comes into existence as that which is separate from any other; yet the posterior is dependent on what is prior to it, so dependent that it cannot remain in existence without what is prior. For what is posterior is held in connection with and has its form preserved by what is prior. From this it may also be seen that what is posterior contains within itself all things that are prior to it in their proper order. It is like modes ¹ and the forces proceeding from those modes as underlying substances. This is how it is with a person's interiors and exteriors, and also how it is with the things that make up the life he has.

[2] Unless one conceives interior things and exterior things in a person as entities formed in the way just described, one cannot begin to have any idea of the external man and the internal man or of the flowing of the one into the other, let alone of the rise and the life of the interior man or the spirit, and of what that man is like when the external, the bodily part, is separated through death. If a person conceives exterior things and interior ones as a continuous progression into what is purer and purer, so that through that continuity they are inseparable, and are not therefore made distinct through a series of formations of posterior things from prior ones, that person cannot help supposing that when the external dies the internal dies too. For he thinks that they are inseparable, and because they are inseparable, continuing one into the other, that when one dies, so does the other; for one takes the other with it. These matters have been mentioned so that people may know that the internal and the external are distinct and separate from each other, and that interior things and exterior ones follow one another in consecutive order, also that all interior things exist together within exterior ones, or what amounts to the same, that all prior things exist within posterior ones, which is the subject in the internal sense of the verses under consideration here.

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