487. 'Days means periods of time and states in general. This has been shown in Chapter 1, where the 'days of creation' have no other meaning. In the Word it is very common for a whole period of time to be called 'a day', as it clearly is in the present verse and in verses 5, 8, 11, 14, 17, 20, 23, 27, 31, below; and therefore the states that belong to periods of time in general are meant by 'days' as well. And when 'years' is attached, then periods of years mean the natures of those states, and so the states in particular.

[2] The most ancient people had their own particular numbers which they would use to mean different aspects of the Church - for instance, the numbers three, seven, ten, twelve, and many which they obtained from these and other numbers - and in so doing incorporated states of the Church. These numbers therefore contain arcana that would require considerable effort to unravel. Really a number was an evaluation of the states of the Church. The same feature occurs throughout the Word, especially in the prophetical. And the religious ceremonies of the Jewish Church also entail numbers specifying periods of time as well as quantities; for example, in connection with sacrifices, minchahs, oblations, and other practices, which in every case have special reference to holy things. Consequently eight hundred in this verse, nine hundred and thirty in the next, and the numbers of years mentioned in the verses that follow after that, embody in particular more matters than can possibly be retold; matters, that is to say, which have to do with changes in the state of their Church in relationship to their own general state. Later on, in the Lord's Divine mercy, the meaning of the simple numbers up to twelve will be given, for without knowing these first of all no one can grasp what compound numbers mean.

6156. 'That you shall give a fifth to Pharaoh' means that remnants are to be assigned to the general whole, which is under the control of the internal. This is clear from the meaning of 'five' or 'a fifth' as remnants, dealt with in 5291, 5894; and from the representation of 'Pharaoh' as the general whole within the natural, as above in 6153, the expression 'under the control of the internal' being used for the reason dealt with above in 6145. For what remnants are, see 1050, 1738, 1906, 2284, 5135, 5897, 5898, where it is shown that they are goods and truths stored away by the Lord in the interior man. They are brought out into the exterior or natural man when a person is in a state of goodness; but they are withdrawn and stored away again the moment he passes into a state of evil. They are withdrawn and stored away again to prevent them from being mixed up with evils and thereby destroyed.

[2] During the time that a person is unable to be regenerated his remnants are held in safe keeping within him interiorly; but when he is being regenerated they are brought from his interiors - as many as are appropriate to the stage reached in his regeneration - into his exteriors, for the reason that through regeneration his interiors become joined to his exteriors and act in unison with them. Those remnants are assigned first to general wholes, then gradually to specific parts. From this one may see, since the subject here in the internal sense is the regeneration of the natural, what is meant by the assignment of those remnants to the general whole in the natural.