Arcana Coelestia #31
31. That 'the great lights' mean love and faith, and are also mentioned as the sun, the moon, and the stars, is clear from various places in the Prophets, as in Ezekiel,
When I have blotted you out, I will cover the heavens and darken their stars, I will cover the sun with a cloud, and the moon will not give its light. All the bright lights in the heavens I will make dark over you, and I will put darkness over your land. Ezekiel 32:7-8.
This refers to Pharaoh and the Egyptians, who are used in the Word to mean the sensory and the factual. The meaning here is that they will have blotted out love and faith by means of sensory evidence and factual knowledge. In Isaiah,
The day of Jehovah for making the earth a desolation; for the stars of the heavens and their constellations 1 will not give their light; the sun will be darkened in its rising, and the moon will not shed its light. Isaiah 13:9-10.
In Joel,
The day of Jehovah is coming, a day of darkness and thick darkness. The earth quakes before Him, the heavens tremble, the sun and moon are darkened, and the stars withdraw their shining. Joel 2:10.
[2] In Isaiah, in reference to the Lord's Coming and the enlightenment of gentiles, and so to a new Church, in particular to individuals who are in darkness but who are beginning to receive the light and be regenerated,
Arise, shine, for your light has come. Behold, darkness is covering the earth, and thick darkness the peoples, but Jehovah will arise upon you, and nations will walk towards your light, and kings to the brightness of your rising. Jehovah will be for you an everlasting light; your sun will no more go down nor your moon be withdrawn, for Jehovah will be for you an everlasting light. Isaiah 60:1-3, 19-20.
In David,
Jehovah makes the heavens by intelligence, He spreads out the earth upon the waters, He makes the great lights, the sun to have dominion over the day, and the moon and stars to have dominion over the night. Psalms 136:5-9.
And in the same author,
Praise Jehovah, sun and moon, praise Him, all stars of light! Praise Him, heaven of heavens, and waters that are above the heavens! Psalms 148:3-4.
[3] In all of these places 'the lights' mean love and faith. Because the lights represented and meant love and faith in the Lord, the Jewish Church was commanded to keep a light burning all the time from evening till morning, for every command which that Church received was representative of the Lord. Concerning this light it is said,
Command the sons of Israel that they take oil for the light, to cause a lamp to burn continually. In the Tent of Meeting outside the veil which is before the testimony Aaron and his sons shall tend it from evening to morning before Jehovah. [Exodus 27:20-21]
That this means the love and faith which the Lord kindles and causes to shine in the internal man, and by means of the internal man in the external man, will in the Lord's Divine mercy be shown at that point in Exodus.
Footnotes:
1. literally, orions
Ezekiel 4
1
You also, son of man, take a tile, and lay it before yourself, and portray on it a city, even Jerusalem:
2
and lay siege against it, and build forts against it, and cast up a mound against it; set camps also against it, and plant battering rams against it all around.
3
Take for yourself an iron pan, and set it for a wall of iron between you and the city: and set your face toward it, and it shall be besieged, and you shall lay siege against it. This shall be a sign to the house of Israel.
4
Moreover lie on your left side, and lay the iniquity of the house of Israel on it; [according to] the number of the days that you shall lie on it, you shall bear their iniquity.
5
For I have appointed the years of their iniquity to be to you a number of days, even three hundred ninety days: so you shall bear the iniquity of the house of Israel.
6
Again, when you have accomplished these, you shall lie on your right side, and shall bear the iniquity of the house of Judah: forty days, each day for a year, have I appointed it to you.
7
You shall set your face toward the siege of Jerusalem, with your arm uncovered; and you shall prophesy against it.
8
Behold, I lay bands on you, and you shall not turn you from one side to the other, until you have accomplished the days of your siege.
9
Take for yourself also wheat, and barley, and beans, and lentils, and millet, and spelt, and put them in one vessel, and make bread of it; [according to] the number of the days that you shall lie on your side, even three hundred ninety days, you shall eat of it.
10
Your food which you shall eat shall be by weight, twenty shekels a day: from time to time you shall eat it.
11
You shall drink water by measure, the sixth part of a hin: from time to time you shall drink.
12
You shall eat it as barley cakes, and you shall bake it in their sight with dung that comes out of man.
13
Yahweh said, Even thus shall the children of Israel eat their bread unclean, among the nations where I will drive them.
14
Then I said, Ah Lord Yahweh! behold, my soul has not been polluted; for from my youth up even until now have I not eaten of that which dies of itself, or is torn of animals; neither came there abominable flesh into my mouth.
15
Then he said to me, Behold, I have given you cow's dung for man's dung, and you shall prepare your bread thereon.
16
Moreover he said to me, Son of man, behold, I will break the staff of bread in Jerusalem: and they shall eat bread by weight, and with fearfulness; and they shall drink water by measure, and in dismay:
17
that they may want bread and water, and be dismayed one with another, and pine away in their iniquity.
