23. Nothing is more common in the Word than for the word 'day' to be used to mean the particular time at which events take place, as in Isaiah,

The day of Jehovah is near. Behold, the day of Jehovah comes. I will make heaven tremble, and the earth will be shaken out of its place, on the day of My fierce anger. Its time is close at hand, and its days will not be prolonged. Isaiah 13:6, 9, 13, 22.

And in the same prophet,

Her antiquity is in the days of antiquity. On that day Tyre will be forgotten for seventy years, like the days of one king. Isaiah 23:7, 15.

Since 'day' stands for the particular time it also stands for the state associated with that particular time, as in Jeremiah, Woe to us, for the day has declined, for the shadows of evening have lengthened! Jeremiah 6:4

And in the same prophet,

If you break My covenant that is for the day and My covenant that is for the night, so that there is neither daytime nor night at their appointed time. Jeremiah 33:20, 25.

Also,

Renew our days as of old. Lamentations 5:21.

7680. 'The whole of that day and the whole of that night' means all the perception, both that which was darkened and that which was not darkened, of the molesting ones - that is to say, it was all destroyed. This is clear from the meaning of 'day' as a state of undarkened perception; and from the meaning of 'night' as a state of darkened perception. For periods of the day - morning, midday, evening, and night - correspond to degrees of enlightenment, that is, of intelligence and wisdom, 5672, 6110, and so to degrees of perception. In general day and night are called degrees of perception, not of enlightenment, because the evil who molest have no enlightenment, though they may still have perception. They have it for as long as there remains with them any knowledge at all of truth and goodness which they had acquired from the Church in which they had lived. For through truth and goodness they have contact with those who are in heaven. But once they have been deprived of such knowledge, as happens when they have undergone vastation, they no longer have any perception. Those in hell are, it is true, able to justify their evils, and also their falsities; but this is not perception. Perception is seeing that truth is truth and good is good, and also that evil is evil and falsity is falsity. But it is not perception when people see truth as falsity, or good as evil, and conversely see evil as good or falsity as truth. Those who do this have delusion instead of perception. That delusion takes on the appearance of perception, in that people such as they know how to justify falsities and evils by means of the kinds of ideas that suggest themselves to the senses and lend support to their evil longings.