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:

2323. Evening is a time of visitation, as can be seen from its symbolism.

The Word compares conditions in a religious culture both to seasons of the year and to times of day–the yearly seasons of summer, fall, winter, and spring, and the daily periods of midday, evening, night, and morning. Religious conditions resemble these times and seasons.

The condition of religion that is referred to as evening occurs when neighborly love dies out and so when faith starts to disappear. In other words, it occurs when religion comes to an end. This evening is the kind followed by night (see §22). Evening is also a time when neighborly love shines and faith accordingly does too. So it is a time when a new religion dawns. This kind of evening is the half-light that anticipates morning (see §883). Evening symbolizes both.

When one religion ends the Lord provides for a new one to rise, and to rise at the same time the other disappears. If the church did not exist somewhere in the world, the human race could not survive, because its connection with heaven would break, as shown in §§468, 637, 931, 2054.

[2] The current chapter deals with both states of religion: the dawn of a new one (represented by Lot) and the death of the old (symbolized by Sodom and Gomorrah). This can be seen from the summary [§§2312-2316] . That is why the text here says that two angels came to Sodom in the evening. That is also why it mentions what happened in the evening (verses 1-3), in the night (verses 4-14), in the morning as dawn rose (verses 15-22), and after the sun came up (verses 23-26).

[3] Since evening symbolizes those conditions in the religious culture, it also symbolizes a visitation that comes before a judgment. When judgment looms–the salvation of the faithful and the damnation of the faithless–first comes a visitation, or an examination into the character of the people to see whether any neighborly love or faith remains. This visitation occurs in the evening, so the visitation itself is also called evening time, as in Zephaniah:

Doom to the inhabitants in the region of the sea, to the nation of the Cherethites! Jehovah's word is against you, Canaan, land of the Philistines, and I will destroy you, until there is no inhabitant. The survivors of the house of Judah will graze in the houses of Ashkelon. In the evening they will lie down, because Jehovah their God will visit them and bring them back from captivity. (Zephaniah 2:5, 7)