664. And after three days and a half.- That this signifies when completed, thus the end of the old church, and the beginning of a new church, is evident from the signification of three days and a half, as denoting fulness or completion at the end of the old church, when there is the beginning of a new church, concerning which see above (n. 658). The reason why it is said, after three days and a half, is, that days, in the Word, signify states, here, the last state of the church. For all times, in the Word, as hours, days, weeks, months, years, and ages, signify states in the Word, as in this case, the last state of the church, when there is no longer any good of love or truth of faith remaining. Because days signify states, and since in the first chapter of Genesis the establishment of the Most Ancient Church is treated of which was accomplished successively from one state to another, therefore it is said there that there was evening and there was morning the first, the second, the third, the fourth, the fifth, and sixth days, unto the seventh, when it was completed (Genesis 1:5, 8, 13, 19, 23, 31), and the days there do not mean days, but the successive states of the regeneration of men at that time, and the consequent establishment of the church with them. So also elsewhere in the Word.

2106. That 'Abraham was a son of ninety-nine years' means the state and the period of time prior to the union of the Lord's Divine Essence with His Human Essence is clear from the meaning of 'ninety-nine years' as the period of time before the Lord fully joined the Internal Man to the Rational, dealt with above in 1988. The Lord's Internal Man, as stated frequently already, was Jehovah Himself, that is, the Divine Itself which, once united to the Human, is the Rational, for the human begins in the inmost part of the rational and from there extends itself to one's external.