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.

928. 'The imagination of man's heart is evil from his childhood' means that the will part of man's mind is totally evil. This is clear from what has just been stated. 'The imagination of the heart' has no other meaning. Man supposes that he has a will for good, but in this he is utterly mistaken. When he does good, he does not act from his own will but from the new will which is the Lord's, and thus from the Lord. Likewise when he thinks and utters what is true, he speaks from the new understanding deriving from that new will, and so again from the Lord. For one who has been regenerated is an entirely new person who has been formed by the Lord. This also is why he is said to have been created anew.