37. As for the statement that 'the lights will be for signs, and for set times, and for days, and for years', this contains more arcana than can be presented at this point, though no arcanum at all is visible in the sense of the letter. For now only this can be said: Change in spiritual and celestial things takes place both on general and on particular scales, and is comparable to changes that take place through the day and through the year. Changes through the day are from morning to midday, from then on to evening, and through the night to the morning. Changes in the year similar, from spring to summer, from then on to autumn, and through winter to spring. These bring changes in temperature and amount of daylight, and so in the fertility of the earth. Compared to such changes are the changes that take place in spiritual and celestial things. Life without changes and variations would lead to sameness, and so no life at all. Good and truth would not be recognized and identified, let alone perceived. In the Prophets such changes are called 'ordinances', as in Jeremiah,

[Thus] said Jehovah who gives the sun for light by day and the ordinances of the moon and of the stars for light by night, These ordinances will not depart from before Me. Jeremiah 31:35-36.

And in the same prophet,

Thus said Jehovah, If I have not established My covenant of day and night, the ordinances of heaven and earth . . . Jeremiah 33:25.

But these things will in the Lord's Divine mercy be dealt with at Genesis 8:12.

4263. 'Two hundred she-goats and twenty he-goats; two hundred sheep and twenty rams' means Divine goods and accompanying truths. This is clear from the meaning of 'she-goats and sheep' as goods, dealt with in 3995, 4006, 4169; from the meaning of 'he-goats and rams' as truths, dealt with in 4005, 4170, in this case Divine goods and truths. The reason why goods and truths are mentioned so many times, and why they are meant by so many different things, is that everything in heaven or in the Church has a relationship with them - everything of love and charity with good, and everything of faith with truth. Yet the genera and species of good and truth are countless, indeed limitless, as becomes clear from the fact that all who are governed by good are within the Lord's kingdom and yet good is not one and the same with one community as it is with another, nor is it even one and the same with one individual within a community as it is with another. For it is by no means possible for one and the same good to exist in two individuals, still less in many, for if one and the same good existed in them, there would not even be two, let alone many of them. Every single whole consists of varying parts, doing so through heavenly harmony and concord.