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.

3128. 'And told [those of] her mother's house all about these things' means towards whatever natural good enlightenment was able to reach. This is clear from the meaning of 'mother's house' as the good of the external man, that is, natural good. For 'a house' means good, see 2233, 2234, ¹ 2559; and man's external or natural is received from the mother, but his internal from the father, 1815. In the Word the good that exists with a person is compared to 'a house', and for that reason one who is governed by good is called 'the House of God'. But internal good is called one's 'father's house', while good of an identical degree is spoken of as one's 'brethren's house', and external good, which is the same as natural good, is referred to as one's 'mother's house'. Furthermore all good and truth is born in this fashion, that is to say, by means of the influx of internal good as the father into external good as the mother.

[2] Since the subject in this verse is the origin of truth that was to be joined to good in the Rational it is therefore said that Rebekah, who represents that truth, 'ran to her mother's house', for this is where truth originates. As stated and shown above, all good flows in by an internal route, that is, by way of the soul, into man's rational, and through the rational into his factual knowledge, and even into his sensory awareness, and by means of enlightenment there causes truths to be seen. From there truths are summoned, stripped of the natural form they possess, and joined to good in the mid-way position, that is to say, in the rational, and together constitute the rational man, and at length the spiritual man. How all this is effected however is quite unknown to anyone, for at the present day scarcely any knowledge exists of what good is or of its being distinct and separate from truth. Still less does anyone know that a person is reformed by means of the influx of good into truth and by the joining together of the two. Nor is it known that the rational is distinct and separate from the natural. And since these matters which are very general are unknown, it cannot possibly be known how truth is introduced into good, and how the joining together of these two is effected - which are the things dealt with in this chapter in the internal sense. Now seeing that these arcana have been revealed and are open to view to any who are governed by good, that is, who have minds like those of angels, such arcana, no matter how obscure they may appear to others, must be explained since they are in the internal sense.

[3] Regarding that enlightenment, which comes from good by way of truth in the natural man, here called 'the mother's house', the position is that Divine Good with man flows into his rational, and through the rational into his natural, and even into his factual knowledge, that is, into the cognitions and matters of doctrine there, as has been stated. Then by fitting the truths there to itself, inflowing Divine Good shapes them for itself, and by means of them enlightens everything in the natural man. But if the life of the natural man is such that it does not receive Divine Good, but either rejects, or perverts, or stifles it, Divine Good cannot fit truths to itself and so shape them for itself. As a consequence the natural cannot be enlightened any longer, for enlightenment in the natural man is effected by good through truths; and when there is no longer any enlightenment no reformation can take place. This is the reason why in the internal sense also so much reference is made to the nature of the natural man, and so to the origin of truth, namely that it arises from the good there.

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