30. Verses 14-17 And God said, Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens, to make a distinction between the day and the night; and they will be for signs, and for set times, and for days and years. And they will be for lights in the expanse of the heavens, to give light upon the earth; and it was so. And God made the two great lights, the greater light to have dominion over the day, and the lesser light to have dominion over the night; and the stars. And God set them in the expanse of the heavens to give light upon the earth.

No one can have an adequate understanding of what 'the great lights' are unless he knows what the underlying essence of faith is and how it develops in people who are being created anew. The very essence and life of faith is the Lord alone. In fact it is impossible for anyone who does not believe in the Lord to have life, as He Himself has said in John,

He who believes in the Son has eternal life; but he who does not believe in the Son will not see life, but the wrath of God will rest upon him. John 3:36.

[2] With people who are being created anew faith develops as follows: First of all they have no life, for life does not exist in anything evil and false but in what is good and true. Then they start to receive life from the Lord by means of faith - first by faith existing in the memory, which is factual faith, then by faith existing in the understanding, which is conceptual faith, and after this by faith existing in the heart, which is loving or saving faith. Factual faith and conceptual faith are represented in verses 3-13 by the inanimate, but faith made alive by means of love is represented in verses 20-25 by the animate. Consequently this is the first point at which love and faith deriving from it, which are called 'lights', are dealt with. Love is 'the greater light which has dominion over the day', and faith deriving from love is 'the lesser light which has dominion over the night'. And because they ought to make one the verb in the phrase 'let there be lights 'is singular and not plural.

[3] Love and faith have their place in the internal man as warmth and light do in the external, bodily man, and for this reason love and faith are represented by warmth and light. Therefore it is said that 'the lights' were set in the expanse of the heavens, that is, in the internal man - the greater light in his will and the lesser in his understanding. Yet they make their appearances in the will and understanding only as sunlight does in the objects it strikes. To the Lord alone belongs the mercy which moves the will with love and the understanding with truth or faith.

8364. 'I will not put on you any sickness that I put on the Egyptians' means that they are to be withheld from the evils present among those who uphold separated faith and lead a life of evil. This is clear from the meaning of 'sickness' as evil, dealt with below; from the representation of 'the Egyptians' as those who uphold separated faith and lead a life of evil, dealt with in 7097, 7317, 7926, 8148; and from the meaning of 'not putting on you' - when used in association with 'sickness', which means evil - as withholding from evil. For Jehovah, that is, the Lord, does not take away evil but withholds a person from it and maintains him in good, 929, 1581, 2256, 2406, 4564, 8206. So it is that 'not putting a sickness on them' means that they are to be withheld from evils.

[2] The reason why 'sickness' means evil is that in the internal sense the kinds of things that attack spiritual life are meant. The sicknesses which attack it are evils, and they are called evil desires and cravings; and the components of spiritual life are faith and charity. That life is sick when falsity exists instead of the truth of faith and evil instead of the good of charity, because they lead to the death of that life, which is called spiritual death and is damnation, just as sicknesses lead to the death of natural life. This is why in the internal sense 'sickness' means evil, and 'the sicknesses of the Egyptians' means the evils which those upholding separated faith and leading a life of evil cast themselves into, and which they used to molest the upright. Those evils have been dealt with in what has gone before, where the plagues in Egypt were the subject.

[3] Evils are again meant by 'sicknesses' elsewhere in the Word, as in Moses,

If you keep the commandments and the statutes and the judgements which I am commanding you today, Jehovah will take away all sickness from you, and will not put on you any of the evil diseases of Egypt which you have known, but will lay them on [all] who hate you. Deuteronomy 7:11, 15.

In the same author,

If you will not obey the voice of Jehovah your God, taking care to do all His commandments and His statutes, Jehovah will send on you cursing, confusion, and rebuke in all that you set your hand to do, ¹ until you are destroyed, because of the wickedness of your deeds by which you have forsaken Me. Jehovah will make the pestilence cling to you, until He has consumed you from upon the land. Jehovah will strike you with consumption, and hot fever, and burning fever, and raging fever, and drought, and blight, and mildew, which will pursue you until you perish. Jehovah will strike you with the sores of Egypt, and with hemorrhoids, and the scab, and the itch, so that you cannot be healed. Jehovah will strike you with madness, and blindness, and stupefaction. ² You will be made mad by what your eyes will see ³ . Jehovah will strike you with evil sores on the knees and on the thighs, from which you cannot be healed, from the sole of your foot to the top of your head. He will throw back onto you every disease of Egypt, also every sickness and every plague that is not written in the book of this Law. Jehovah will give you a trembling heart, failing ⁴ of eyes, and distress of soul. Deuteronomy 28:15, 20-22, 27-28, 34-35, 60-61, 65.

All the sicknesses mentioned here mean spiritual sicknesses, which are evils destructive of the life of a will desiring what is good and falsities destructive of the life of an understanding seeing what is true, in short things destructive of spiritual life composed of faith and charity. Natural sicknesses also correspond to such things, for every sickness present among the human race has its origin in spiritual ones, because each exists as a result of sin, 5712, 5726. Each sickness furthermore corresponds to its own evil. The explanation for this is that everything composing a person's life originates in the spiritual world. If therefore his spiritual life is sick, evil spreads from it into his natural life and becomes a sickness there. See what has been stated from experience in 5711-5727 about the correspondence of sicknesses with evils.

[4] The same things are meant by 'sicknesses' elsewhere, as in Moses,

You shall worship Jehovah your God, in order that He may bless your bread and your water; and I will take sickness out of your midst. Exodus 23:25.

In the same author,

If you despise My statutes, and if your soul abhors My judgements, so that you do not do all My commandments, while you make void My covenant, I will appoint terror over you, along with consumption, and burning fever, which will consume the eyes and torment the soul. Leviticus 26:15-16.

'Consumption' stands for the decrease of truth and the increase of falsity, 'burning fever' for the desire for evil. Further still, in Isaiah,

Why will you also defect? ⁵ The whole head [departs] into sickness, and the whole heart is diseased. From the sole of the foot even to the head there is no soundness in it, but wounds, and scars, and recent blows. They are not pressed out, nor bound up, nor softened with oil. Isaiah 1:5-6.

Here nobody can fail to see that 'sickness', 'wounds', 'scars', and 'blows' are used to mean sins. Similarly in Ezekiel,

Woe to the shepherds of Israel! The weak sheep you have not strengthened, the sick you have not healed, and the broken you have not bound up. Ezekiel 34:2, 4.

In David,

My iniquities have gone over my head. My wounds have become putrid, they have rotted away because of my foolishness. For my intestines are full of burning, and there is no soundness in my flesh. Psalms 38:4-7.

[5] Since the disorders and evils of spiritual life are meant by 'sicknesses', the various kinds of disorders and evils of that life are meant by the various kinds of sicknesses. 'Pestilence' means the vastation or laying waste of goodness and truth, see 7102, 7505; and 'leprosy' means the profanation of truth, 6963. In general 'sicknesses' means sins, as may also be seen in Isaiah,

... a man of sorrows, and acquainted with sickness, on account of which as it were men hid their faces from Him. He was despised, so that we did not esteem Him. Nevertheless He has borne our sicknesses and carried our sorrows, and through His wounds healing has been given to us. Isaiah 53:3-5.

This refers to the Lord.

[6] Since sicknesses represented the unrighteous ways and the evils of spiritual life the sicknesses which the Lord healed have as their meaning deliverance from the different kinds of evil and falsity that were molesting the Church and human race and that would have brought spiritual death. Divine miracles are distinguishable from other miracles by the fact that they involve and have regard to states of the Church and the heavenly kingdom; and this is why the Lord's miracles were primarily healing of sicknesses. These miracles are meant by the Lord's words addressed to the disciples sent by John,

Tell John the things which you hear and see: the blind see and the lame walk; lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear; the dead rise again and the poor hear the gospel. Matthew 11:4-5.

This is why it says so many times that the Lord healed every sickness and every disease among the people, Matthew 4:23; 9:35; 14:14, 35-36; Luke 4:40; 5:15; 6:17; 7:21; Mark 1:32-34; 3:10.

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