22. Genesis 1:5. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day.
From this we now see what evening and morning mean. Evening is every preliminary stage, because such stages are marked by shadow, or by falsity and an absence of faith. Morning is all later stages, because these are marked by light, or by truth and religious knowledge.
Evening stands in general for everything that is our own, while morning stands for everything of the Lord's. As David says, for example:
The Spirit of Jehovah has spoken in me and his words are on my tongue. The God of Israel has said, the rock of Israel has spoken to me. He is like the morning light when the sun rises, like a morning when there are no clouds, when because of the brightness, because of the rain, the tender grass springs from the earth. (2 Samuel 23:2-3, 4)
Since evening is when there is no faith and morning is when there is faith, the Lord's coming into the world is called morning. The period in which he came, being a time of no faith, is called evening. In Daniel:
The Holy One said to me, "Up till [the day's second] evening, when it becomes morning, 1 two thousand and three hundred times." (Daniel 8:14, 26)
Morning in the Word is similarly taken to mean every coming of the Lord, so that it is a word for being created anew.
Footnotes:
1. "Up till [the day's second] evening" means "when the night becomes morning." In addition to the usual meaning as the time when day turns into night, Swedenborg considered the word "evening" in Old Testament idiom to apply as well to the twilight before dawn. Compare Secrets of Heaven 883, "Evening meant the half-light before morning," and a similar statement in §2323:1. Compare also Secrets of Heaven 7844, 10135:5, where Swedenborg discusses the Mosaic phrase "between the evenings" (Exodus 12:6; 16:12; 29:39, 41; 30:8; Leviticus 23:5; Numbers 9:3, 5, 11; 28:4, 8) and defines it as meaning "overnight," that is, during the period between twilight at the end of one day and twilight at the beginning of the next. [LHC]
